Yvan Muller will start round three of the 2012 World Touring Car Championship from Pole Position after qualifying, where he will be joined by former SEAT team-mate Gabriele Tarquini.
Click here for full results of the Valencia qualifying session.
Muller had already secured provisional pole position with his first flying attempt before bettering it on his second run to finish 0.363s ahead of Tarquini, while the top three was completed by the ROAL Motorsport BMW 320TC of Tom Coronel.
Top Independent is Pepe Oriola, who continued to show the potential of the new SEAT Sport 1.6T engine, and lines up fourth overall, ahead of the second Chevrolet of Rob Huff.
The rest of the top twelve was Norbert Michelisz 6th, Franz Engstler seventh, Alexey Dudukalo eighth – the Russians Lukoil Racing Team SEAT Leon then caught fire in Parc Ferme – Alain Menu ninth, having posted a time late in the session and Stefano D’Aste, who secured himself Pole Position for the second race.
Tiago Monteiro and Darryl O’Young also qualified for Q2 and will line up in P11 and P12 for both the races.
The first segment of qualifying saw the times constantly improving and with a number of drivers having a period at the top. Oriola spent some time on top of the times before Muller, Tarquini and Menu came calling.
Muller was then demoted to eighth after his best time was disallowed for running too wide, and with a minute left of the session, the reigning Champion was on the cusp of being knocked out all together, before improving to seventh.
Tarquini topped the first part of qualifying ahead of Menu and Dudukalo, while the biggest name to miss out on Q2 was Alex MacDowall, who lines up fourteen. Top Team Aon driver is James Nash, who lines up sixteenth while team-mate Tom Chilton is down in twenty-first.
After Qualifying, Muller has extended his Championship advantage having secured the five points for Pole Position, and now has 59 points to the 37 of Huff and 26 of Menu.