» WTCC Round 3: Farfus takes surprise pole as SEATS trip up

Augusto Farfus took a surprise pole position in qualifying ahead of the opening race of the World Touring Car Championship’s third round of the 2010 season, courtesy of a major blunder by SEAT’s Gabriele Tarquini.

The Spanish marque had been expected to breeze to pole position with the turbo diesel cars ideally suited to the long straights on the Monza circuit, but problems in the five-car peloton turned into something of an own-goal for the squad, much to the benefit of rivals BMW and Chevrolet.

All five remaining SEATs were compromised when Gabriele Tarquini drifted wide at the second Lesmo right-hander when running at the head of the queue, forcing all following drivers to back off.

By the time the drivers had realigned themselves for another shot in the ten-minute Q2 session, the best performance in their tyres had gone, and the end result was the top-five grid positions being split between the BMW and Chevrolet cars.

Farfus’ first timed run did enough, edging our Robert Huff’s Chevrolet Cruze by less than three-hundredths of a second.

With Andy Priaulx, Alain Menu and Yvan Muller occupying positions three to five on the starting line-up, Jordi Gené was the quickest of the SEATs, followed by Tarquini, Norbert Michelisz, Fredy Barth, and Tiago Monteiro.

Darryl O’Young’s Chevrolet Lacetti wound up quickest of the Independent Trophy contenders – perhaps a surprise result given the flurry of BMWs in the class – and will start from the sixth row.

The surprise elimination in Q1 was SEAT’s Tom Coronel, with the Dutch driver consigned to the garage for much of the session and only able to post a single flying lap en route to 13th on the grid.

FIA 2010 WTCC Round 2 Marrakech Qualifying Results:

	Driver	Car	Q1 Time	Q2 Time
1.	Augusto Farfus	BMW 320si	2:01.126	2:00.672
2.	Robert Huff	Chevrolet Cruze LT	2:00.775	2:00.697
3.	Andy Priaulx	BMW 320si	2:00.941	2:00.807
4.	Alain Menu	Chevrolet Cruze LT	2:00.091	2:00.899
5.	Yvan Muller	Chevrolet Cruze LT	2:00.34	2:01.078
6.	Jordi Gené	SEAT León TDI	2:01.629	2:01.400
7.	Gabriele Tarquini	SEAT León TDI	2:00.690	2:01.544
8.	Norbert Michelisz	SEAT León TDI	2:01.006	2:01.731
9.	Fredy Barth	SEAT León TDI	2:01.581	2:01.926
10.	Tiago Monteiro	SEAT León TDI	2:00.862	2:01.927
11.	Michel Nykjær	SEAT León TDI	2:01.765
12.	Darryl O’Young (I)	Chevrolet Lacetti	2:02.186
13.	Tom Coronel	SEAT León TDI	2:02.235
14.	Harry Vaulkhard (I)	Chevrolet Lacetti	2:02.384
15.	Leonel Pernía	Chevrolet Cruze LT	2:02.441
16.	Mehdi Bennani (I)	BMW 320si	2:02.829
17.	Kristian Poulsen	BMW 320si	2:02.834
18.	Franz Engstler (I)	BMW 320si	2:02.983
19.	Stefano D’Aste (I)	BMW 320si	2:03.276
20.	Sergio Hernández (I)	BMW 320si	2:04.260
21.	Andrey Romanov (I)	BMW 320si	2:04.327
22.	Fabio Fabiani (I)	BMW 320si	2:08.144