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Alain Menu leads Chevrolet sweep in Curitiba World Touring Car Championship practice

Alain Menu led a Chevrolet one-two-three in the half-hour World Touring Car Championship test at Curitiba on Friday

The Swiss racer produced a time of 1m22.743s in the final minute to edge out long-time pacesetter Rob Huff by 0.173 seconds.

Reigning world champion Yvan Muller was a close third, 0.027s behind the Briton.

The performance indicated that despite Chevrolet recently announcing its factory withdrawal from the WTCC at the end of the season, the RML-prepared cars are unlikely to suffer any drop-off in form.

Lukoil SEAT driver Gabriele Tarquini was top non-Chevrolet runner in fourth. The Italian, who confirmed his switch to the factory Honda WTCC team for 2013 this week, was over a second adrift of Menu.

The Bamboo Chevrolet Cruzes had an encouraging showing to round out the top six. WTCC rookie Alex MacDowall claimed fifth spot ahead of new team-mate, Swedish series frontrunner and WTCC returnee, Michel Nykjaer.

Dane Nykjaer is substituting for Bamboo's regular driver Pasquale di Sabatino, who the team reported is recovering from bronchitis and pneumonia.

Tom Coronel took top BMW honours for ROAL Motorsport in seventh, ahead of Salzburging reversed-grid winner Stefano D'Aste.

Pos  Driver             Team/Car             Time       Gap
 1.  Alain Menu         Chevrolet            1m22.743s
 2.  Robert Huff        Chevrolet            1m22.916s  + 0.173s
 3.  Yvan Muller        Chevrolet            1m22.943s  + 0.200s
 4.  Gabriele Tarquini  Lukoil SEAT          1m23.572s  + 0.829s
 5.  Alex MacDowall     Bamboo Chevrolet     1m23.769s  + 1.026s
 6.  Michel Nykjaer     Bamboo Chevrolet     1m24.261s  + 1.518s
 7.  Tom Coronel        ROAL BMW             1m24.521s  + 1.778s
 8.  Stefano D'Aste     Wiechers BMW         1m24.561s  + 1.818s
 9.  Tiago Monteiro     Tuenti SEAT          1m24.934s  + 2.191s
10.  Tom Chilton        Arena Ford           1m25.105s  + 2.362s
11.  Norbert Michelisz  Zengo BMW            1m25.130s  + 2.387s
12.  Alberto Cerqui     ROAL BMW             1m25.187s  + 2.444s
13.  Darryl O'Young     Special Tuning SEAT  1m25.274s  + 2.531s
14.  Aleksei Dudukalo   Lukoil SEAT          1m25.414s  + 2.671s
15.  Mehdi Bennani      Proteam BMW          1m25.765s  + 3.022s
16.  Franz Engstler     Engstler BMW         1m25.861s  + 3.118s
17.  James Nash         Arena Ford           1m25.899s  + 3.156s
18.  Charles Ng         Engstler BMW         1m26.406s  + 3.663s
19.  Tom Boardman       Special Tuning SEAT  1m26.462s  + 3.719s
20.  Pepe Oriola        Tuenti SEAT          1m27.255s  + 4.512s
21.  Fernando Monje     SUNRED SEAT          1m28.023s  + 5.280s

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