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WTCC ROUNDS 1 & 2 - MONZA, ITALY

MULLER GRABS POLE IN ACTION-PACKED QUALIFYING
Yvan Muller will start the first WTCC race of the 2013 season from pole position after setting the fastest time (1:56.486) in Qualifying. His time is a new qualifying lap record for Monza and nearly 1.5 seconds faster than the previous record set last year by Gabriele Tarquini. Behind the French driver on the grid will be two other Chevrolet Cruze cars of Tom Chilton and Alex MacDowall with the latter also the highest placed of the Yokohama Trophy contenders.
Results remain provisional pending technical checks.

Qualifying 1
The season got off to a dramatic start when the SEAT of the reigning World Champion Rob Huff made contact with Fredy Barth's BMW on the very first lap, leaving the León stranded on the circuit with broken front right suspension. Once the red-flag period ended, it was Muller who set the early pace ahead of Michel Nykjær and Tom Chilton, but on lap 4 Aleksei Dudukalo collided with his LADA Sport Lukoil teammate James Thompson going into Turn 1 and so the Russian driver would play no further part in the session. Thompson, though, was able to limp back to the pits so his mechanics could repair the damage and so he could start Q2.
The following drivers went through to Q2: Muller, Chilton, Nykjær, MacDowall, Oriola, Nash, Tarquini, O'Young, Basseng, Thompson, Monje, D'Aste.

Qualifying 2
Muller's pole-winning time occurred on only his second lap, with his RML teammate Tom Chilton (1:57.345) setting the second-fastest time on Lap 3. Alex MacDowall (1:57.685) was third quickest in the bamboo-engineering Cruze with Pepe Oriola's SEAT (1:57.833) the best non-Chevrolet. Tarquini's Castrol Honda Civic (1:57.946) rounded off the top five, with James Nash (1:58.005),
Michel Nykjær (1:58.172), Marc Basseng (1:8.518), James Thompson (1:58.669) and Darryl O'Young (1:58.781) completing the top ten. Fernando Monje (1:58.814) was eleventh fastest and Stefano D'Aste (2:00.475) twelfth. Thanks to the reversed grid, it will be the BMW 320 TC of Darryl O'Young that will start Race 2 from pole position.

GRID PENALTIES FOR TARQUINI AND DUDUKALO
The Stewards of the meeting judged Gabriele Tarquini and Aleksei Dudukalo guilty for causing incidents during today's qualifying session. Tarquini hit the SEAT of René Münnich at the Parabolica and sent him spinning onto the gravel trap.
Dudukalo missed the braking point at the first chicane and t-boned the LADA car of his own team-mate James Thompson.
Both drivers were given a drop of five places on the grid for tomorrow's Race 1. This will demote Tarquini from fifth to tenth and Dudukalo from 16th to 21st.

ETCC ROUNDS 1 & 2 - MONZA
QUALIFYING REPORT

DOMINANT FULÍN TAKES POLE AT MONZA
The Krenek Motorsport BMW 320si of Petr Fulín will start the first race of the 2013 ETCC from pole position after setting the fastest time early in the thirty-minute Qualifying session at Monza. BMW cars occupied all of the top four places; Mat'o Homola was second fastest, third quickest was Ibrahim Okyay and Oleg Petrikov was fourth. The leading non-BMW - and the leading Single-Make Trophy competitor - was the SEAT of Andreas Pfister which was fifth quickest.

Fulín was quickest in yesterday's first test session and then fastest again in this morning's Free Practice, so his pole position was no surprise. What did raise eyebrows was the fact that his time (2:01.986) was nearly 1.4 seconds faster than Homola (2:03.379), with Okyay (2:03.667), Petrikov (2:03.875), Pfister (2:03.880) and sixth-placed Christian Fischer (2:03.882) all breaking the 2:04 barrier.
The Single-Make Trophy for SEAT León Copa cars saw Pfister around four-tenths of a second clear of his nearest challenger, but Jordi Oriola (2:04.209) was then just three-thousands of a second quicker than Aurélien Comte (2:04.212) and so the class is set for a thrilling battle tomorrow.

In the Super 1600 category, it was the Ford Fiesta ST of Gilles Bruckner from Luxembourg that set the fastest time (2:18.134) although Kevin Krammes (2:18.357) and ‘Romeo Luciano' (2:19.589) will be out to make life difficult for Bruckner in the two ETCC races tomorrow.

The new Ladies' Cup saw Andrina Gugger (2:05.106) qualify in 12th place overall and 9th in Super 2000, while Ulrike Krafft (2:20.095) was 4th in S1600 and 29th overall. Results remain provisional pending technical checks.

PENALTIES RAIN ON ETCC COMPETITORS
Ibrahim Okyay, who had posted the third fastest lap had all his qualifying times disallowed due to his car being more than 60 kilos underweight.  Six drivers will be demoted by five grid positions on the grid for tomorrow's Race 1; all of them because of pit lane infringements. Andreas Pfister, who had qualified fifth (and on pole for the SMT class), Aurélien Comte (10th), Mario Dablander (13th), Nikolay Karamyshev (15th), Norbert Nágy (21st) and Gianni Giudici (24th). Ferenc Fizca who had qualified 18th, was given two five-position penalties, also for pit lane infringements. Oleg Chebotarov (22nd) and Roman Golikov (25th) had all their qualifying times disallowed for not stopping at the weighing bay.