Honda’s Gabriele Tarquini continued his good form in second practice for the World Touring Cars at the Slovakiaring, beating RML’s Yvan Muller and Tom Chilton to the fastest time of the session.
Click here for the full second practice times.
The Italian’s time was just 0.013 seconds slower than his best from first practice, but was quick enough to deny Muller the top spot by 0.183 seconds. Tarquini’s time came late in the session though, with Chilton and Muller trading top times throughout the first half.
“It’s still complicated,” said Muller after the session. “This track is very, very hard because there is every sort of corner. It is complicated to do a full lap without problems with a good car because every corner is different.”
Muller also added that strong winds at the Slovakiaring were making completing a problem-free lap difficult.
“On the straight there is a head-wind so the car’s slow down a lot. Then in turn two we have it on the side and that pushes the car to the outside which is not a very good feeling.”
Münnich Motorsport’s Rob Huff improved on his first practice pace to take P4, whilst Tarquini’s Honda team-mate Tiago Monteiro was more than a second slower than this early pace and could only finish the session in P5.
Darryl O’Young was the top BMW driver in sixth, ahead of Norbert Michelisz, who had a relatively problem-free session for once.
The top 10 was completed by Fernando Monje, Tom Coronel and Pepe Oriola, with the latter receiving a black-and-orange flag during the session after damage to his door left it flapping in the strong winds.
Several drivers explored the limits of the track, with Charles Kaki Ng, Marc Basseng, Fredy Barth and Alex MacDowall all visiting the gravel at some point. Ng and MacDowall both got stuck and hence caused yellow-flags which limited the ability of drivers to improve their laps.
Qualifying takes place at 15:30 CEST (14:30 GMT).
More to follow.