Farfus fastest in Curitiba test

The Brazilian sat atop the timesheet for most of the half-hour session and bettered his time in the closing stages following a brief red flag while Stefano D'Aste's indepedent BMW was retrieved from a spin into the gravel.

"I am happy," reported Farfus. "We took advantage of the red flag and pitted to make some changes to the car, which were very effective. It was a good feeling to drive around so quickly. Now I have set the pace, I'm sure that from tomorrow the others will be closer but I wish to stay ahead if I can."

Alain Menu pulled out a late quick lap to take the second fastest time for Chevrolet, demoting Andy Priaulx's BMW to third.

Yvan Muller was fourth fastest on his first official outing for Chevrolet, just a tenth ahead of team-mate Rob Huff. Reigning champion Gabriele Tarquini was sixth fastest in the first of the SEATs.

The WTCC today announced that no diesel-powered cars will be eligible for the independents' class, so Hungarian Norbert Michelisz's seventh place in his Zengo-Dension entered SEAT is officially a factory effort. The fellow works SEATs of Tom Coronel, Tiago Monteiro and Michel Nykjaer rounded out the top 10.

The fastest official independent was Darryl O'Young, making his series debut with Bamboo Engineering in a Chevrolet Lacetti. He finished the session 11th quickest.

Jordi Gene was the only frontrunner not to complete much mileage in the half hour, limited to just three laps by a steering problem on his Leon TDi.

Pos Driver             Car        Time           Gap
 1. Augusto Farfus     BMW        1m24.243s
 2. Alain Menu         Chevrolet  1m24.732s  +0.489s
 3. Andy Priaulx       BMW        1m24.739s  +0.496s
 4. Yvan Muller        Chevrolet  1m24.805s  +0.562s
 5. Rob Huff           Chevrolet  1m24.960s  +0.717s
 6. Gabriele Tarquini  SEAT       1m25.308s  +1.065s
 7. Norbert Michelisz  SEAT       1m25.625s  +1.382s
 8. Tom Coronel        SEAT       1m25.846s  +1.603s
 9. Tiago Monteiro     SEAT       1m25.864s  +1.621s
10. Michel Nykjaer     SEAT       1m26.424s  +2.181s
11. Darryl O'Young     Chevrolet  1m26.514s  +2.271s
12. Fredy Barth        SEAT       1m26.570s  +2.327s
13. Sergio Hernandez   BMW        1m26.682s  +2.439s
14. Mehdi Bennani      BMW        1m26.870s  +2.627s
15. Harry Vaulkhard    Chevrolet  1m26.971s  +2.728s
16. Franz Engstler     BMW        1m26.985s  +2.742s
17. Stefano D'Aste     BMW        1m27.430s  +3.187s
18. Andrei Romanov     BMW        1m29.246s  +5.003s
19. Jordi Gene         SEAT       1m39.699s +15.456s