Turkington heads Shanghai practice

Colin Turkington kicked off his World Touring Car Championship comeback brilliantly by setting the pace in the opening practice session at Shanghai.

Enjoying a first outing in the WTCC in 2012, and six years after he last raced a front-wheel drive touring car, Turkington swiftly acclimatised to his WSR Chevrolet Cruze.

The former British Touring Car champion recorded a fastest time of 1m56.019s, almost 0.4s quicker than factory Chevrolet driver and joint championship leader Rob Huff.

“The last front-wheel drive car I raced was an MG in 2006,” Turkington told Eurosport after the session.

“Since then I have been racing BMWs. I was a wee bit nervous before coming here, but the Cruze is a good car and has a good level of grip.

“I have only had 14 flying laps in this car, so a good weekend would be to finish behind the three blue [factory] Cruzes, but let’s see how qualifying goes.”

Lukoil Racing’s Gabriele Tarquini demonstrated a strong improvement in pace over Friday’s test to end the session third in his SEAT Leon.

Alain Menu was one of the few drivers underwhelmed by the Chinese Grand Prix venue during testing. But the championship outsider made a late effort in FP1 to improve from sixth to fourth fastest, just 0.001s shy of Tarquini’s effort.

In the third of the factory Cruzes, world champion Yvan Muller trailed Menu in fifth place, ahead of Shanghai fan Tom Coronel’s ROAL Motorsport BMW.

European Touring Car Cup winner Fernando Monje was a solid seventh, but his SUNRED SEAT team-mate Pepe Oriola caused the session to be red-flagged with little over a minute left when his Leon stopped on the pit straight.

Tiago Monteiro was 10th fastest in factory Honda, while Tom Boardman’s lone Special Tuning SEAT was 12th.

Source: http://www.iracing.com/inracingnews/other-news/touring-cars/wtcc/turkington-heads-shanghai-practice

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