Paul Ricard WTCC: Monteiro tops damp first practice

For the majority of the session, the top spot was disputed by all three of the factory Honda drivers, with Monteiro, Rob Huff and Norbert Michelisz all having their turn in front.

Along with the Honda's, Fredrik Ekblom’s Volvo S60 and Gabriele Tarquini in the Lada Vesta also briefly headed the timesheet.

The times slowly improved during the 30 minutes, starting in the 1m45s, it gradually came down into the 1m42s.

Tarquini was the first to break into the 1m42 barrier with five minutes to go, before Jose Maria Lopez produced a time two-tenths quicker just before the chequered flag in his Citroen C-Elysee, and the reigning champion looked set to lead his second session of the weekend.

Honda’s Monteiro however had one more run to go, and the Portuguese driver set the best overall first sector in his upgraded Honda Civic, and went on to finish just over a tenth of a second faster than Lopez.

Gregoire Demoustier also set a late improvement to go third fastest in the Sebastien Loeb Racing-run Citroen, and ended up as the best placed independent driver, with Tarquini the fastest Lada in fifth and Ekblom the top Volvo in tenth.

17 cars took part in the session, with Ferenc Ficza completing four laps with the Zengo Honda Civic, running with a spare engine on loan from the factory team for today only.

Tom Coronel set just an out and in-lap in his ROAL Motorsport Chevrolet Cruze and didn’t set a representative time.

FP1 Results:

Pos.	Driver	Car	Time	Gap
1	Tiago Monteiro	Honda	1'42.565
2	Jose Maria Lopez	Citroen	1'42.698	0.133
3	Gregoire Demoustier	Citroen	1'42.699	0.134
4	Norbert Michelisz	Honda	1'42.799	0.234
5	Gabriele Tarquini	Lada	1'42.824	0.259
6	Rob Huff	Honda	1'42.904	0.339
7	Tom Chilton	Citroen	1'43.040	0.475
8	Nicky Catsburg	Lada	1'43.213	0.648
9	Yvan Muller	Citroen	1'43.321	0.756
10	Fredrik Ekblom	Volvo	1'43.595	1.03
11	Hugo Valente	Lada	1'43.644	1.079
12	John Filippi	Chevrolet	1'44.033	1.468
13	Thed Björk	Volvo	1'44.217	1.652
14	Mehdi Bennani	Citroen	1'44.295	1.73
15	Ferenc Ficza	Honda	2'20.721	38.156
16	Rene Munnich	Chevrolet	2'30.946	48.381
17	Tom Coronel	Chevrolet		-