Huff steals Macau Race 1 pole from Guerrieri

With a last gasp effort Rob Huff claimed pole position for tomorrow’s WTCR Race 1 at Macau, demoting Esteban Guerrieri to second.
Huff, who had been the fastest in yesterday’s practice in his Sébastian Loeb Racing Volkswagen Golf GTI, topped the Qualifying timesheet for most of the 45-minute session with a provisional fastest lap of 2:29.597. However, with less than seven minutes to go, Guerrieri’s Münnich Motorsport Honda Civic set a new record at 2:29.519.
But Huff had still an ace up his sleeve and, as the chequered flag was waved, he improved further to an impressive 2:29.040 that was nearly half-a-second faster than Guerrieri’s best lap.
Some of the other top drivers improved as well in the final part of the session: Yvan Muller qualified third (2:29.631) ahead of his nephew Yann Ehrlacher (2:29.960) and Jean-Karl Vernay (2:30.037).
Current points leader Gabriele Tarquini ranked eight (2:30.403) behind Mehdi Bennani and Norbert Michelisz, while Frédéric Vervisch and Pepe Oriola rounded off the top ten.
The session was disrupted once by the red flag with 23 minutes left on the clock, when title contender Thed Björk crashed into the wall at the Fishermen’s bend; he eventually ranked 16^th.
The Qualifying session for Races 2 and 3 will follow at 13:35 local time (6:35 CET), while Race 1 will start tomorrow at 14:25 local time (07:25 CET) with Gordon Shedden and Ehrlacher demoted to 28^th and 31^st on the grid respectively. The Scot received a drop of ten positions because of a reprimand after yesterday’s Practice, his third during the season, while Ehrlacher’s penalty was the consequence of an engine change.