Qualifying: Larini takes pole

"It is my first pole of the season and also my first time here!" he said. "I was not sure that I would be able to improve by half a second with my last set of tyres. I am not far ahead of Rydell but I am still on pole. Giovanardi is normally on pole but he does not have a good feeling for this racetrack. It is therefore a good opportunity for me to recover some points in the Championship I just hope that I will not receive team orders during the races, and that I will win them!"

Three times Larini had to fight back to reclaim the top starting slot, but interestingly it was not his team-mate Giovanardi who was the main threat, but the much-improved Volvo S60 of local hero Rickard Rydell.

In fact, it was a tough session for the runaway championship leader, who spun on his first qualifying effort and could then do no better than set the fourth fastest time - and that was a last-gasp banzai effort.

Fredrik Ekblom showed the BMW's potential when he claimed provisional pole at the start of the session with a time the equal of anything the Alfas had achieved in practice. However, Larini soon re-established the normal order by blowing the Swede's time into the weeds with a lap of 1m41.081s. But any thoughts the former Ferrari F1 driver had that it would be enough for pole where dispelled halfway through the session when Rydell recorded the first sub-1m41s lap of the weekend.

Larini's response was emphatic. He beat his own personal best by almost a second to reduce the pole mark to 1m40.321s. Behind him Peter Kox was giving Carly Motorsport it best session of the year, briefly holding fourth, before Tom Ferrier also broke into the 1m40s to snatch third spot, and Giovanardi made his late improvement.