After recording the fastest lap in the second free practice session this morning, N.Technology’s James Thompson was looking strong to compete for one of the top-spots in today’s FIA World Touring Car Championship’s (WTCC) qualifying at Oschersleben, Germany, before red flags late in the session ended his bid for pole position.

Ex-double British Touring Car Champion Thompson, who didn’t get to test the Alfa Romeo 156 since the WTCC’s last round at Anderstorp, set a time of 1:36.151 on new tyres, a time which was 0.192s quicker than second-placed BMW’s Jorg Muller. “We haven’t had the luxury of testing here before like the other teams and in the first session we just learned what the track is like," said Thompson after setting the fastest second practice session time. “We changed a little bit more on the car for the second free practise and it worked very well. The team did a fantastic job this morning and let’s hope we will be as competitive in qualifying," he added. Meanwhile the Brit’s team-mate, Olivier Tielemans, finished the session in 20th place with a time of 1:37.891.

In the qualifying session the Alfa Romeo 156 was quick from the outset, recording the fastest time to lead the field by 0.051s early on. As the track and air temperature rose, he registered a total of 12 laps and a best time of 1:36.620, putting him in ninth place. His time was just 0.329s behind pole sitter Gabriele Tarquini (SEAT Sport).

The 30-minute session was briefly red-flagged due to an incident involving SEAT Sport’s Michel Jourdain when he lost control of his car. With just over five minutes remaining qualifying continued and Thompson was one of the first out on track in a bid to improve his lap time. Heavy traffic and yellow flags, however, meant he was unable to improve.
 

Tielemans, meanwhile, was going well in the sister Alfa Romeo, climbing up to 12th place at one stage. The Dutchman’s fastest lap time of 1:37.136 put him in 17th place for tomorrow’s first of two races at the German circuit. “We are really fast but if you read the laps you can see that we have 11 cars within 0.4s so it is like a lottery in the last lap in qualifying," said N.Technology Team Manager Andrea Muller.

At the front it was the SEAT drivers' who dominated the qualifying session. Tarquini signed off a last gasp pole position, beating team-mate Yvan Muller and Independent Roberto Colciago by 11 and 14 thousandths of a second respectively. BMW's fastest driver was Jörg Müller who set the fourth fastest lap on his home track, just ahead of Chevrolet's Alain Menu and of his own team-mate Augusto Farfus. Again the session was incredibly close, with 21 cars qualified within the same second.

James Thompson: “There just weren’t enough clean laps towards the end and too many yellow flags, one on the last run and traffic as well. If I just repeated the time from this morning, I would have been on pole so I’m sure I could have definitely been in the top three this afternoon.”

Olivier Tielemans: “On the one side I feel pretty happy because I feel that I’m improving myself. You spend the whole season developing and today, for the first time, I developed the car’s set-up on my own. It’s going to be tough tomorrow. The top-20 are all within one second, so you can imagine how close it is going to be in the race. We will try our best.”