» WTCC Valencia: Tarquini takes SEAT pole

Defending World Touring Car champion Gabriele Tarquini has taken an all-important pole position for SEAT on their Spanish home soil ahead of Sunday’s double-race header at the Ricardo Tomo circuit.

Tarquini defied popular expectation that Chevrolet would take a 1-2-3 sweep in qualifying with a blistering early lap in the second phase of qualifying to hold out in the challenge against the blue Cruzes.

Robert Huff joins Tarquini on the front row of the grid, with the other Chevrolets of Yvan Muller and Alain Menu right behind them on the second row.

The third row will be headed by the next-quickest SEAT of Tiago Monteiro, who qualified just quicker than team-mate Tom Coronel.

Despite the Dutch driver posting the sixth-quickest overall, he will take a ten-place grid penalty into the opening race by dint of an engine change this weekend. Instead, this promoted Spanish favourite Jordi Gené onto the third row, ahead of Fredy Barth, who posted the fastest time overall in Q1.

Curiously, the works BMWs continued their poor pace into qualifying proper, and lined up slowest of all in Q2, with Andy Priaulx only scraping into Q2 by 0.026 seconds over Michel Nykjær.

Norbert Michelisz could be another driver who may have to face a ten-place grid drop, with his engine letting go in the final minutes of Q1, and ensuring that he wouldn’t be a part of proceedings in Q2.

The Independent Trophy runners occupied the slowest eight positions in Q1, but it was Marc Carol who carried some local pride by proving quickest of all the regular runners. The Valencia-born driver qualified 14th-quickest for Sunday’s rolling start race.

FIA 2010 WTCC Valencia Qualifying Results:

	Driver	Car	Q1 Time	Q2 Time
1.	Gabriele Tarquini	SEAT León TDI	1:44.727	1:44.111
2.	Robert Huff	Chevrolet Cruze LT	1:44.937	1:44.193
3.	Yvan Muller	Chevrolet Cruze LT	1:44.922	1:44.258
4.	Alain Menu	Chevrolet Cruze LT	1:44.710	1:44.439
5.	Tiago Monteiro	SEAT León TDI	1:44.869	1:44.468
6.	Tom Coronel*	SEAT León TDI	1:44.789	1:44.525
7.	Jordi Gené	SEAT León TDI	1:44.897	1:44.773
8.	Fredy Barth	SEAT León TDI	1:44.604	1:45.070
9.	Augusto Farfus	BMW 320si	1:44.823	1:45.205
10.	Andy Priaulx	BMW 320si	1:45.313	1:45.416
11.	Michel Nykjær	SEAT León TDI	1:45.339
12.	Kristian Poulsen	BMW 320si	1:45.607
13.	Norbert Michelisz	SEAT León TDI	1:45.741
14.	Marc Carol (I)	SEAT León TFSI	1:45.837
15.	Darryl O’Young (I)	Chevrolet Lacetti	1:46.017
16.	Sergio Hernández (I)	BMW 320si	1:46.116
17.	Mehdi Bennani (I)	BMW 320si	1:46.419
18.	Franz Engstler (I)	BMW 320si	1:46.717
19.	Stefano D’Aste (I)	BMW 320si	1:46.783
20.	Yukinori Taniguchi (I)	Chevrolet Lacetti	1:46.997
21.	Andrey Romanov (I)*	BMW 320si	1:47.344