Coronel goes top in second practice

Coronel, who took his only WTCC victory at Okayama two years ago, lapped the former Pacific Grand Prix venue in 1m38.943s on his first flying effort.

Despite this being almost a second slower than Augusto Farfus's morning time, it was still enough to leave the Dutchman quickest.

Like Coronel, Britain's Rob Huff had precious little running during the morning, but this did not stop the Chevrolet driver lapping 0.036 seconds slower to go second.

Tiago Monteiro was the best of the SEAT drivers, the Portuguese putting his SR-Sport Leon TDI third ahead of Farfus's BMW and Robert Dahlgren's Polestar Volvo.

Alain Menu (Chevrolet) was sixth with Franz Engstler surprisingly next up in his Team Engstler BMW. The German was the best of the independent competitors.

It was a tough session for championship leader Yvan Muller, who ended up ninth, one spot behind the Zengo Dension SEAT of Norbert Michelisz.

Having just left the pits midway through the session, the world championship leader's left-rear wheel tried to depart his Chevrolet, although Muller was able to nurse the car back to the pits without losing the offending item.

He stayed there for 10 minutes while the RML mechanics checked out his suspension, but returned to the track for one final flying lap during the dying minutes.

Former British Touring Car champion Colin Turkington completed the top 10 in his WSR BMW with Muller's title rivals Gabriele Tarquini (SR-Sport SEAT) and Andy Priaulx (BMW) next up.

The session was largely incident-free although Yoshihiro Ito did spin his Engstler BMW at the Hobbs hairpin early on.

Pos  Driver              Car        Time       Gap
 1.  Tom Coronel         SEAT       1m38.943s
 2.  Rob Huff            Chevrolet  1m38.979s  + 0.036s
 3.  Tiago Monteiro      SEAT       1m39.105s  + 0.162s
 4.  Augusto Farfus      BMW        1m39.110s  + 0.167s
 5.  Robert Dahlgren     Volvo      1m39.208s  + 0.265s
 6.  Alain Menu          Chevrolet  1m39.421s  + 0.478s
 7.  Franz Engstler      BMW        1m39.443s  + 0.500s
 8.  Norbert Michelisz   SEAT       1m39.455s  + 0.512s
 9.  Yvan Muller         Chevrolet  1m39.567s  + 0.624s
10.  Colin Turkington    BMW        1m39.579s  + 0.636s
11.  Gabriele Tarquini   SEAT       1m39.653s  + 0.710s
12.  Andy Priaulx        BMW        1m39.660s  + 0.717s
13.  Michel Nykjaer      SEAT       1m39.722s  + 0.779s
14.  Fredy Barth         SEAT       1m39.818s  + 0.875s
15.  Michael Rossi       SEAT       1m39.916s  + 0.973s
16.  Darryl O'Young      Chevrolet  1m40.230s  + 1.287s
17.  Andrei Romanov      BMW        1m40.410s  + 1.467s
18.  Stefano D'Aste      BMW        1m40.473s  + 1.530s
19.  Yukinori Taniguchi  Chevrolet  1m40.622s  + 1.679s
20.  Kristian Poulsen    BMW        1m40.635s  + 1.692s
21.  Sergio Hernandez    BMW        1m40.706s  + 1.763s
22.  Mehdi Bennani       BMW        1m40.801s  + 1.858s
23.  Yoshihiro Ito       BMW        1m40.913s  + 1.970s
24.  Masataka Yanagida   BMW        1m42.080s  + 3.137s
25.  Nobuteru Taniguchi  BMW        1m42.160s  + 3.217s
26.  Henry Ho            BMW        1m42.755s  + 3.812s
27.  Kevin Chen          BMW        1m42.824s  + 3.881s