Nurburgring Nordschleife WTCC: Jose Maria Lopez storms qualifying

Yellow flags late in the session disrupted the attempts of several other drivers to set a comparable time, but Lopez's team-mate Sebastien Loeb had already posted a lap good enough for third on the grid.

Owing to the unique nature of this event, the series abandoned its traditional three-session knockout format in favour of a single hour-long block.

Lopez was the first driver to set a flying lap, posting a time of 8m41.462s - two seconds off his fastest from the dry morning practice session, but enough to stand as the best of the first attempts.

Honda privateer Norbert Michelisz was the first to run a second lap in an effort to unseat Lopez but missed by 0.460s, although neither of the two factory Honda drivers could match his pace in the Civic.

Lopez then slashed his own personal best with an 8m37.716 on his second run, and while the chasing pack - led by Loeb and Valente - also improved their times, no one could find as much as Lopez.

Michelisz edged back ahead of Valente on his third attempt with an 8m40.595s to go third, only for Valente to riposte with 8m38.579s.

In a frenzied final few minutes the rest of the frontrunners - including Lopez - headed out to improve their times, but Citroen's Ma Qing Hua ran off into the barriers between the Flugplatz and Adenauer.

Yellow flags therefore forced a number of drivers to abort their final runs, but Lopez was already through and improved to 8m37.327s.

Loeb's second flying lap put him ahead of Michelisz, and Ma's pre-incident best left him fifth ahead of team-mate Yvan Muller.

The works Hondas of Gabriele Tarquini and Tiago Monteiro were eighth and 10th, split by Chevrolet privateer Tom Coronel, but he will start from the back of the grid due to changing engines for this race weekend.

He will still join Monteiro on the reversed-grid front row for race two. Both events take place on Saturday ahead of the start of the Nurburgring 24 Hours.

After showing well in practice, the Ladas of Rob Huff and Jaap van Lagen succumbed to electrical problems before they could set representative times.

QUALIFYING RESULT: