By alley - Mar 7, 2015, 3:31 PM ET

WTCC: Lopez dominates qualifying on home ground

Citroen's Jose Maria Lopez claimed pole position for the opening round of the 2015 World Touring Car Championship in Argentina by a commanding 1.2-second margin from team-mate Yvan Muller. It was a dominant performance made all the more emphatic by the fact that key rivals made conspicuous errors.

Rob Huff was fastest of all in the new Lada Vesta in the first round of qualifying, after which Gregoire Demoustier, John Filippi, Dusan Borkovic, Rickard Rydell and Norbert Michelisz (who lost his front-left wheel) were eliminated. But the Ladas were unable to repeat that performance in the second round, and Huff will start both Sunday's races in 11th place. Team-mate James Thompson will start the reverse-grid race two on pole postion by dint of finishing 10th in Q2.

Ma Qing Hua closed out Q2 fastest of all in a factory Citroen 1-2-3 ahead of Lopez and Yvan Muller, but he over-committed on his fast lap in the Q3 shoot-out and will start race one from fourth on the grid.

Sebastien Loeb also had an off-track moment in Q3 while Honda's Tiago Monteiro, the sole non-Citroen runner to make it through to the final round of qualifying, could not summon the pace to challenge the C-Elysees.

Muller set a benchmark time of 1m46.701s, but his time on provisional pole was shortlived as Lopez nailed a searingly clean lap of 1m45.461s.

"I don't think anybody apart form me did a clean lap," said Lopez. "It's not possible to have a gap of one second in Q3."

Laptimes were slower than this morning's second practice owing to higher ambient temperatures in the early afternoon sun.

RACE ONE STARTING GRID:

Pos	Driver	Team	Car	Time	Gap
1	Jose Maria Lopez	Citroen Total WTCC	Citroen	1m 45.461s	-
2	Yvan Muller	Citroen Total WTCC	Citroen	1m 46.701s	1.240s
3	Sebastien Loeb	Citroen Total WTCC	Citroen	1m 47.061s	1.600s
4	Ma Qing Hua	Citroen Total WTCC	Citroen	1m 47.203s	1.742s
5	Tiago Monteiro	Honda Racing Team JAS	Honda	1m 47.633s	2.172s
6	Tom Chilton	ROAL Motorsport	Chevrolet	1m 46.738s	-
7	Gabriele Tarquini	Honda Racing Team JAS	Honda	1m 46.967s	-
8	Stefano D'Aste	All-Inkl.com Munnich Motorsport	Chevrolet	1m 47.120s	-
9	Tom Coronel	ROAL Motorsport	Chevrolet	1m 48.322s	-
10	James Thompson	LADA Sport Rosneft	Lada	1m 50.165s	-
11	Robert Huff	LADA Sport Rosneft	Lada	1m 50.553s	-
12	Mehdi Bennani	Sebastien Loeb Racing	Citroen	-	-
13	Dusan Borkovic	Proteam Racing	Honda	1m 48.443s	-
14	John Filippi	Campos Racing	Chevrolet	1m 48.507s	-
15	Gregoire Demoustier	Craft-Bamboo Racing	Chevrolet	1m 49.042s	-
16	Rickard Rydell	Nika International	Honda	1m 49.267s	-
17	Norbert Michelisz	Zengo Motorsport	Honda	-	-
18	Hugo Valente	Campos Racing	Chevrolet	-	-