Chevrolet blitzes final practice

Reigning world champion Yvan Muller led a formidable Cruze 1-2-3-4 in the final half hour session ahead of this afternoon's qualifying.

The Frenchman demoted Rob Huff from P1 with eight minutes of track time remaining, and maintained a 0.141 seconds advantage over the Briton to the chequered flag. Muller's lap was some 1.2s faster than Huff's 2010 pole position time.

Guest driver Caca Bueno, who is also competing in his regular Brazilian Stock Car championship this weekend, demonstrated no ill-effects from his constant car hopping to edge out Alain Menu for third spot.

Gabriele Tarquini was best of the rest in his SUNRED SEAT Leon, albeit over a second slower than Muller's effort.

A last gasp lap promoted Franz Engstler to sixth. The German led a trio of BMWs to finish as the highest-placed independent driver.

Conditions had dried considerably since this morning's first practice. The only off-track incident of note befell the youngest driver in the field, 16-year-old Pepe Oriola. The SUNRED driver careered through one of Curitiba's gravel traps, but avoided sustaining any damage to his Leon.

Hong Kong's Marchy Lee parked his KK Motorsport BMW by the pitlane exit with technical problems after completing just two laps.

Pos  Driver              Team/Car          Time       Gap
 1.  Yvan Muller         Chevrolet         1m22.455s
 2.  Rob Huff            Chevrolet         1m22.596s  + 0.141s
 3.  Carlos Bueno        Chevrolet         1m22.654s  + 0.199s
 4.  Alain Menu          Chevrolet         1m22.796s  + 0.341s
 5.  Gabriele Tarquini   SUNRED SEAT       1m23.612s  + 1.157s
 6.  Franz Engstler      Engstler BMW      1m23.619s  + 1.164s
 7.  Tom Coronel         ROAL BMW          1m23.626s  + 1.171s
 8.  Kristian Poulsen    Engstler BMW      1m23.758s  + 1.303s
 9.  Tiago Monteiro      SUNRED SEAT       1m23.783s  + 1.328s
10.  Fredy Barth         SUNRED SEAT       1m23.998s  + 1.543s
11.  Michel Nykjaer      SUNRED SEAT       1m24.066s  + 1.611s
12.  Mehdi Bennani       Proteam BMW       1m24.609s  + 2.154s
13.  Darryl O'Young      bamboo Chevrolet  1m24.696s  + 2.241s
14.  Pepe Oriola         SUNRED SEAT       1m24.729s  + 2.274s
15.  Javier Villa        Proteam BMW       1m25.014s  + 2.559s
16.  Robert Dahlgren     Polestar Volvo    1m25.097s  + 2.642s
17.  Aleksei Dudukalo    SUNRED SEAT       1m25.451s  + 2.996s
18.  Yukinori Taniguchi  bamboo Chevrolet  1m25.719s  + 3.264s
19.  Fabio Fabiani       Proteam BMW       1m31.260s  + 8.805s
20.  Marchy Lee          KK BMW            1m42.852s  + 20.397s