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Carlos Bueno at the wheel of his Cruze, sporting an unusual orange livery
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The New Cruze 1.6 Turbo Starts Its Race Career From Pole Position
Huff, Muller and Bueno in the top 3 in Curitiba, Menu 11th
2011-03-19
The new Chevrolet Cruze 1.6 turbo put together an impressive performance in today’s qualifying session in Curitiba. The new Cruze will start its race career tomorrow from the pole, which was conquered by Rob Huff. The Brit will have friendly faces around him, as Yvan Muller was second-fastest and will share first row with Rob and local hero Cacá Bueno, in his orange-livered Cruze, was third-fastest. Alain Menu had a disappointing day, as he missed Q2 in the very final minutes of Q1 and will start from P11 in both races tomorrow.
Humid weather dominated the day in Curitiba, with a slight drizzle coming and going throughout the sessions. The Cruze proved competitive on both dry and humid track, trusting the four top spots in the second free practice session.
Today also marked the inauguration of the new Q1 system, by which the top ten times will be reversed to establish the order of the first five rows of the grid for Race 2. The best-placed Chevrolet will be Bueno’s (5th), who will share third row with Muller (6th), while Huff (8th) will be in row 4.
· QUOTES
Rob Huff (1st): “It’s a fantastic feeling to start the season with a pole! The car was simply brilliant and I was lucky to be able to put up a perfect lap. Q1 was a little bit more difficult, but all in all, I am very satisfied with my position for race 2 as well.”
Yvan Muller (2nd): “We had a very good, although short, second qualifying session, while I prefer not to comment on the new Q1 system... The track became quite humid towards the end of Q2, so almost everybody had to abort a second run, but the result proves that the new Cruze is already very competitive. This just means that all the very hard work that the team put together during the winter was in the right direction and fruitful”.
Cacá Bueno (3rd): “An excellent team result for Chevrolet and a fantastic work by the entire team. I am just happy to be part of all this and to have been able to contribute to today’s 1-2-3. I tried to give my best and was going for an extra run at the end of Q2 but the rain was starting to fall with some intensity and I was forced to go straight at first corner, luckily without any damage. The new Cruze is impressive, a great step forward with respect to last year’s car.”
Alain Menu (11th): “Unfortunately, I found myself in the worst position, as I finished 11th in Q1. I hope that we can understand the reason why. Tomorrow, I will try to do my best to climb up through the field and take as many points as possible.”
Eric Nève: “We almost had a perfect day today. To start the season with the new Cruze with a 1-2-3 is just great. It’s a pity that Alain could not be where he should be, and the engineers are already analyzing all the data to understand what went wrong. This said, it’s terrific to be able to start the season by wearing again the bow-tie on Sunday, which is what our pit-wall crew does traditionally whenever we clinch the pole on Saturday. We hope that tomorrow we can materialize what we have shown today.”
CURITIBA QUALIFYING RESULTS
1. R Huff Chevrolet Cruze 1m21s758
2. Y Muller Chevrolet Cruze + 0s389
3. C Bueno Chevrolet Cruze + 0s745
4. M Nykjaer SEAT León TDI + 0s874
5. K Poulsen BMW 320TC + 0s920
11. A Menu Chevrolet Cruze 1m23s260 (Q1)
CURITIBA RACE 2 GRID
1. M Nykjaer SEAT León TDI (1m23s180)
2. F Barth SEAT León TDI (1m23s172)
3. T Coronel BMW 320TC (1m23s138)
4. G Tarquini SEAT León TDI (1m23s095)
5. C Bueno Chevrolet Cruze (1m23s084)
6. R Huff Chevrolet Cruze (1m23s059)
8. Y Muller Chevrolet Cruze (1m22s980)
11. A Menu Chevrolet Cruze (1m23s260)
Contacts
The four Chevrolet drivers at Curitiba race: Rob Huff, Yvan Muller, Alain Menu and Carlos Bueno
