The factory Chevrolet Cruzes have remained on top at the Hungaroring during the two Saturday morning free practice sessions, though the Polestar Volvo of Robert Dahlgren did keep them on their toes in the second session.
Championship leader Rob Huff posted the quickest time of the morning during the earlier session, with Yvan Muller second quickest, 0.281 seconds slower than Huff with the third Chevrolet of Alain Menu in third for the session, 0.312 seconds off Huff.
Local star Norbert Michelisz was the best of the rest in his Zengo BMW, with Darryl O’Young making it four Chevrolets in the top five in his Bamboo machine. Javier Villa repeated his pace from Friday’s test in sixth, ahead of Tiago Monteiro, Tom Coronel, Kristian Poulsen and Dahlgren.
In the second session Dahlgren, who had gone fourth quickest behind the Chevrolets on Friday, put in an early benchmark that was nearly a second quicker than his time from FP1. This remained good enough for second by the finish, as Muller was the only man able to go quicker. The Frenchman shaved a tenth off his earlier time, but it was not quick enough to beat Huff’s FP1 time.
Behind Dahlgren were Menu and Huff in third and fourth, ahead of Gabriele Tarquini and Villa, who this time managed to go quicker than fellow BMW pilot Michelisz. Coronel was eighth again, ahead of Poulsen and Monteiro.
SUNRED continued to get laps under their belt with their new 1.6 turbo engine. Fredy Barth was the quickest of the trio running the revised car in both sessions, going 13th in FP1 and 11th in FP2. Pepe Oriola also managed a good number of laps in both sessions, setting the 15th and 13th best times. The problems continued to hit Michel Nykjaer however. After only managing an out-lap in Friday’s test the Dane managed plenty of laps in FP1 to split Barth and Oriola on the timesheets, but in FP2 his car suffered fuel feeding problems, again on his first lap out of the pits.
Urs Sonderegger had a few mishaps during the course of the two sessions. In the first session the Wiechers-Sport driver spun at the final corner and then went off at Turn 5, while in the second session he caused a red flag when he went straight on into the tyre barriers at Turn 1.
