World touring: Loeb shines again at Salzburgring

Fresh from victory at the Slovakia-Ring two weeks ago, Sebastien Loeb led the way in World Touring Car Championship practice at the Salzburgring on Saturday morning. The World Rally Championship legend recorded his fastest time of 1m22.421s in the second of two free practice sessions.

Loeb's FP2 effort shaded championship leader Jose Maria Lopez by 0.149 second, while reigning WTCC champion Yvan Muller ended the morning in third. Friday's testing pacesetter Lopez recorded the benchmark time of 1m22.771s in FP1, 0.197sec ahead of Muller.

The second session was stopped after seven minutes when Hugo Valente suffered a high-speed crash on the entry to the Fahrerlagerkurve while attempting to maintain a slipstream from the dominant C-Elysee of Loeb.

Valente's troubles began when he cut the inside of the Turn 9 right-hander, sending his Campos Chevrolet wide. Faced with little room to maneuver, the Frenchman applied a correction before spearing off the circuit to his left. After sustaining a head-on impact against the barriers, the Cruze bounced back into the road, bringing a litter of gravel with it and forcing the following Tom Chilton and Lopez to take avoiding action.

A 20-minute clean-up interval precipitated Hungaroring reversed-grid winner Gianni Morbidelli knocking the Argentinean from his position at the head of the timing screens.

In the closing five minutes of the half-hour session, the Citroen trio responded to Morbidelli's challenge and resumed a one-two-three formation.

Munnich Motorsport racer Morbidelli survived to end the morning 'best of the rest', ahead of the fifth-placed leading Honda of former champion Gabriele Tarquini and Tom Coronel.

The opening session was also incident-packed, and was interrupted twice by red flags, denying Muller a late attempt at toppling Lopez's FP1 fastest time when the session was abandoned.

Loeb had been assisting his Citroen team-mate Muller in providing a slipstream when Mikhail Kozlovskiy's faltering Lada caused a stoppage with just 55 seconds of the scheduled half hour running time remaining.

Coronel ended FP1 in fourth, ahead of Valente who was also in the wars in the opening session.

After enduring power-steering problems on his factory Honda in Friday's test, Tarquini secured sixth ahead of Norbert Michelisz.

Zengo Motorsport racer Michelisz had survived a high-speed trip through the gravel during FP1, but the most significant incident occurred 13 minutes into the session when TC2 competitor Pasquale Di Sabatino lost the rear of his Engstler BMW at the Fahrerlagerkurve.

The Italian spun and embedded the front-right corner of his 320 TC into the Turn 10 tire barriers, bringing out the red flags. Lopez had already recorded his benchmark lap at the time of the crash, and Citroen were entrenched at the head of the classification.

Mehdi Bennani and Lada's James Thompson suffered separate moments running off the road on the exit of the final chicane.

In a troubled start to his Salzburg weekend, Thompson has been retrospectively excluded from the preceding Slovakia-Ring and Hungaroring race results, owing to an unauthorised break to the seal on his engine's oil sump.

The Briton and teammate Mikhail Kozlovskiy are set to start from the final row of the grid at the Salzburgring's opening race, after Lada requested engine changes on their Granta 1.6Ts.