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Alain Menu leads second World Touring Car practice in Japan

Alain Menu spearheaded a Chevrolet one-two-three in today's second World Touring Car Championship practice session at Suzuka

The Swiss driver managed a best of 54.265s, which was enough to leave him 0.365 seconds clear of Yvan Muller and 0.602s ahead of Rob Huff. The session was red flagged three minutes before its scheduled finishing time as the result of a spin by Proteam BMW racer Fabio Fabiani.

Although the session was officially declared wet when it started, the circuit dried out as the session progressed, resulting in lots of movement on the timesheets and rapidly plunging lap-times.

Muller set the early pace before losing his place at the top to the bamboo-engineering Chevrolet of Darryl O'Young. He in turn was replaced by Engstler Motorsport BMW driver Franz Engstler and Muller again, before Menu finally set a time that would stand until the end.

Behind the Chevrolets were SUNRED SEAT's Fredy Barth and Tiago Monteiro in fourth and fifth, while locals Toshi Arai (Chevrolet) and former GP2 racer Hiroki Yoshimoto (SUNRED) were sixth and seventh quickest.

Pos  Driver              Team/Car          Time       Gap
 1.  Alain Menu          Chevrolet         54.205s
 2.  Rob Huff            Chevrolet         54.570s    + 0.365s
 3.  Yvan Muller         Chevrolet         54.807s    + 0.602s
 4.  Fredy Barth         SUNRED SEAT       54.879s    + 0.674s
 5.  Tiago Monteiro      SUNRED SEAT       54.924s    + 0.719s
 6.  Toshi Arai          Chevrolet         55.073s    + 0.868s
 7.  Hiroki Yoshimoto    SUNRED SEAT       55.226s    + 1.021s
 8.  Mehdi Bennani       Proteam BMW       55.277s    + 1.072s
 9.  Colin Turkington    Wiechers BMW      55.293s    + 1.088s
10.  Franz Engstler      Engstler BMW      55.301s    + 1.096s
11.  Norbert Michelisz   Zengo BMW         55.303s    + 1.098s
12.  Javier Villa        Proteam BMW       55.372s    + 1.167s
13.  Pepe Oriola         SUNRED SEAT       55.391s    + 1.186s
14.  Darryl O'Young      Bamboo Chevrolet  55.691s    + 1.486s
15.  Yukinori Taniguchi  Bamboo Chevrolet  55.696s    + 1.491s
16.  Aleksei Dudukalo    SUNRED SEAT       57.354s    + 3.149s
17.  Michel Nykjaer      SUNRED SEAT       57.747s    + 3.542s
18.  Kristian Poulsen    Engstler BMW      57.831s    + 3.626s
19.  Gabriele Tarquini   SUNRED SEAT       58.298s    + 4.093s
20.  Masaki Kano         KK BMW            58.332s    + 4.127s
21.  Tom Coronel         ROAL BMW          58.437s    + 4.232s
22.  Robert Dahlgren     Polestar Volvo    58.804s    + 4.599s
23.  Charles Ng          Engstler BMW      1m00.353s  + 6.148s
24.  Fabio Fabiani       Proteam BMW       1m02.132s  + 7.927s

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