Morocco WTCC: Monteiro beats Michelisz by 0.003s in first practice

The two Honda drivers were considerably quicker than championship leader Jose Maria Lopez, who finished third for Citroen.

At the start, Lada's Nicky Catsburg briefly took the lead, only to be soon demoted by Lopez. It was not long until the Hondas improved their times, forming a 1-2-3 with Michelisz ahead of Rob Huff and Monteiro.

As the session progressed there were some minor incidents, with Thed Bjork going wide as Lopez improved his lap time to split the Hondas putting his C-Elysee in second.

John Filippi and Huff also made mistakes, with the former going wide at the hairpin and the Honda driver having to use reverse gear at Turn 7 after outbraking himself.

Towards the end the track improved considerably, but the Hondas remained on top with Monteiro a blink of an eye quicker than Michelisz, as Lopez stayed in third ahead of Huff.

Bjork went up to fifth in the dying moments of the session, although an even better lap had to be aborted as the Swede found Lada Sport's Gabriele Tarquini on his way.

Nicky Catsburg came home sixth ahead of Lada teammate Hugo Valente, while local hero Mehdi Bennani finished eighth and top independent just ahead of ROAL Motorsport's Tom Coronel in the Chevrolet RML Cruze.

Tarquini completed the top ten for Lada, while Citroen's Yvan Muller seemed to struggle and only finished 14th in the session.

After the chequered flag and the lap that put him in ninth, Coronel outbraked himself at Turn 1, risking a huge crash before saving his Cruze just in time to avoid the barriers.

FP1 results:

Pos	Driver	Car	Time/Gap	Laps
1	Tiago Monteiro	Honda	1'22.081	16
2	Norbert Michelisz	Honda	0.003	15
3	Jose Maria Lopez	Citroen	0.377	17
4	Rob Huff	Honda	0.380	15
5	Thed Bjork	Volvo	0.630	14
6	Nicky Catsburg	Lada	1.003	16
7	Hugo Valente	Lada	1.077	15
8	Mehdi Bennani	Citroen	1.098	16
9	Tom Coronel	Chevrolet	1.201	15
10	Gabriele Tarquini	Lada	1.205	15
11	Fredrik Ekblom	Volvo	1.272	15
12	Tom Chilton	Citroen	1.347	13
13	James Thompson	Chevrolet	1.406	14
14	Yvan Muller	Citroen	1.421	19
15	Gregoire Demoustier	Citroen	2.548	16
16	Ferenc Ficza	Honda	2.954	8
17	John Filippi	Chevrolet	3.475	14