WTCC independents’ trophy battle hots up in Motegi

The two Sébastien Loeb Racing team-mates Mehdi Bennani and Tom Chilton made it into the third and final part of qualifying as they battled for the independents’ pole position point, as the two go head-to-head for this year’s title.

Bennani qualified third, and took the independents’ pole position point and now has 24 point lead over Chilton with 68 left from the remaining rounds of the championship. ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel is also mathematically in the hunt, 49 points down, though the Dutch driver will start last for both races following an engine change ahead of qualifying.

“It’s a great result because in qualifying we are trying to be the fastest,” said Bennani. “When I asked the team about what is our strategy, to fight for ninth or tenth, they said we are here to perform so try to do your best.

“For sure to be close to Yvan (Muller)’s performance I was surprised, but then José (María López) found another way to drive because he was around one second quicker than us. It’s unbelievable and congratulations to him.”

Chilton has been closing down on team-mate and title rival Bennani over the last few rounds, but will be forced to start behind his Moroccan team-mate in the main race after setting the fifth fastest time in qualifying.

“I’ve been on top of (Bennani) for a while now, but I ended up going in not the right direction with the car,” said Chilton to TouringCarTimes.

“For FP2 I made some good changes, but the works boys went one step further and went quicker, and I didn’t follow them in qualifying as because we were second in FP2, my engineer Nick (Silvester) and I thought if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.

“But I’m still happy as it’s the first time I’ve ever been in Q3 with the Citroën, and I’m happy that we did a very good job together in MAC3.”