Muller leads the Vauxhall way at Donington testing
Yvan Muller continued the momentum of his race-winning Thruxton weekend to top the time sheets at the penultimate official British Touring Car Championship test before a ban comes into force at the end of the month
The teams have one more test later this month before a mandatory ban precludes teams from running at any time other than official tests and race meetings. The ban is designed to keep costs at a minimum and prevent better-funded teams from gaining an advantage through extensive testing.
The Vauxhall team, however, already have a sizeable advantage due to the early completion of their Astra Coupes and unsurprisingly the Triple Eight Engineering-built cars occupied the top four slots at Donington today (Friday).
Muller just edged ahead of team mate and championship leader Jason Plato to finish fastest, while the Egg-backed cars of James Thompson Phil Bennett finished almost a second behind in third and fourth places.
"I'm very happy with that," said Muller after taking the top spot. "This morning we didn't work on the set-up for Donington, because we were thinking more of [the next round at] Oulton Park. And in the afternoon, we were looking to do a long run to see how the brakes reacted, but it was difficult because there were lots of red flags."
The best-of-the-rest spot went to the Peugeot 406 Coupe of Steve Soper who finished just ahead of his team mate Dan Eaves in sixth place.
Kurt Luby continued to put miles on the ABG Motorsport Lexus IS200, which made its first appearance in the championship last weekend. Luby made good progress, but lapped almost two seconds off the pace of his nearest rival and the Runcorn-based team decided to call it a day when the 37-year-old beached the car in the gravel.
Gavin Pyper's Alfa Romeo 156 was the fastest of the Production class runners, lapping to within 0.487s of Luby's time. James Kaye was next up in his Barwell Motorsport Honda Accord followed by the Peugeot 306 of Roger Moen rounding out the top 10.
Pos Driver Car Time
Yvan Muller Vauxhall Astra Coupe 1m42.477s
Jason Plato Vauxhall Astra Coupe 1m42.562s
James Thompson Vauxhall Astra Coupe 1m43.219s
Phil Bennett Vauxhall Astra Coupe 1m43.635
Steve Soper Peugeot 406 Coupe 1m43.918s
Dan Eaves Peugeot 406 Coupe 1m44.189s
Kurt Luby Lexus IS200 1m46.028s
Gavin Pyper Alfa Romeo 156 1m46.515s
James Kaye Honda Accord 1m46.974s
Roger Moen Peugeot 306 1m47.967s
P - Production Class
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