The first race of the FIA WTCC will begin at Monza tomorrow with Dirk Müller on pole position. Despite not being the fastest in the two practice sessions, Dirk out drove his rivals when it counted, and topped the qualifying time sheet with a fastest lap of 1:59.009.

Two other BMW cars qualified directly behind Dirk: his team-mate, Jörg Müller and Antonio García. This was an encouraging result for BMW, who claimed both the 2004 FIA ETCC Drivers’ and Manufacturers’ titles.

However, after the end of the session, Jörg had his best lap disallowed by the Stewards because he failed to stop at the weighing scales. This dropped him to 18th and promoted Gabriele Tarquini, the fastest of the Alfa Romeo drivers, to third. His team-mates Augusto Farfus, Fabrizio Giovanardi and James Thompson will start their championship claims from 4th, 8th and 9th positions respectively. 2004 FIA ETCC champion Priaulx managed to squeeze among them to fill the 5th spot on tomorrow’s starting grid.

Another driver had his best performance disallowed today: Roberto Colciago. The JAS Motorsport man had clocked the eighth fastest lap, a 2:00.413. However he was penalised for cutting a chicane and dropped to 13th. SEAT Sport’s Jordi Gené put in a very good performance to reach 7th on the grid meaning that it will not necessarily be a BMW vs Alfa Romeo battle at the front. And this despite that the Monza track is not a favourite of the Spanish cars.

A red flag saw a premature end to qualifying with one minute remaining. The cause was Alain Menu who crashed his Chevrolet Lacetti against the barriers at Lesmo. Earlier the Swiss driver had clocked a lap of 2:02.69 giving him 23rd place whilst his team-mate Huff was 0.078 of a second faster meaning he will start 21st, the highest grid position of the Chevrolet team.

Klenke and Jäger were still struggling to improve their Ford Focus cars’ pace, but they could not achieve any better than positions thirty and thirty two respectively.
 
Wiechers-Sport’s Marc Hennerici was the fastest driver from the Independent's Championship runners, securing a brilliant 12th place overall in his BMW 320i, just behind Alessandro Zanardi, 11th overall, and pole setter for the Italian Superturismo.