Huff quickest in damp first practice

A light rain shower prior to the session left the track slick, and lap times proved some 10 seconds slower than those seen during Friday's tests. Huff's Chevrolet Cruze, fitted with the new generation 1.6 turbo engine, recorded a fastest time of 1m33.507s. SUNRED SEAT driver Gabriele Tarquini ended session in second, 0.183s adrift of the Briton.

Portuguese racer Tiago Monteiro took third place in his Leon, just 0.003s ahead of Chevrolet's Alain Menu.

Reigning champion Yvan Muller (Chevrolet) was fifth, while Dane Michael Nykjaer, driving for the first time since Macau last year, completed the top six in his SEAT.

Friday's pacesetter Tom Coronel waited until the final ten minutes of the half hour session before taking to the track; the ROAL Motorsport BMW driver preferring to conserve his wet weather tyres.

Ending the morning one place behind Coronel in 10th, Robert Dahlgren continued development of the WTCC Volvo C30.

"I think the car is quite strong in the first two sectors," said Dahlgren. "However, we're still losing out a little to the turbo cars exiting the slow corners, and we need to improve the high-speed balance.

"Coming from [the STCC] the tracks were more go-kart style and didn't have so many fast corners. It's also my first time here, so I was experimenting with different lines in the wet rather than aiming for a particular lap time."

The damp conditions caught out a number of customer BMW runners. Engstler's Kristian Poulsen, KK Motorsport's Marchy Lee and Proteam drivers Fabio Fabiani and Mehdi Bennani had quick spins, but successfully avoided making contact with anything solid.

Pos  Driver              Team/Car           Time       Gap
 1.  Rob Huff            Chevrolet          1m33.507s
 2.  Gabriele Tarquini   SUNRED SEAT        1m33.690s  + 0.183s
 3.  Tiago Monteiro      SUNRED SEAT        1m33.751s  + 0.244s
 4.  Alain Menu          Chevrolet          1m33.754s  + 0.247s
 5.  Yvan Muller         Chevrolet          1m33.781s  + 0.274s
 6.  Michel Nykjaer      SUNRED SEAT        1m33.931s  + 0.424s
 7.  Carlos Bueno        Chevrolet          1m34.026s  + 0.519s
 8.  Kristian Poulsen    Engstler BMW       1m34.566s  + 1.059s
 9.  Tom Coronel         ROAL BMW           1m34.661s  + 1.154s
10.  Robert Dahlgren     Polestar Volvo     1m34.704s  + 1.197s
11.  Fredy Barth         SUNRED SEAT        1m34.908s  + 1.401s
12.  Pepe Oriola         SUNRED SEAT        1m35.029s  + 1.522s
13.  Franz Engstler      Engstler BMW       1m35.112s  + 1.605s
14.  Marchy Lee          KK BMW             1m35.417s  + 1.910s
15.  Aleksei Dudukalo    SUNRED SEAT        1m35.630s  + 2.123s
16.  Mehdi Bennani       Proteam BMW        1m36.303s  + 2.796s
17.  Javier Villa        Proteam BMW        1m36.356s  + 2.849s
18.  Darryl O'Young      bamboo Chevrolet   1m36.402s  + 2.895s
19.  Yukinori Taniguchi  bamboo Chevrolet   1m37.168s  + 3.661s
20.  Fabio Fabiani       Proteam BMW        1m42.472s  + 8.965s