Yvan Muller has led home a Chevrolet 1-2-3 in the opening World Touring Car Championship race in Hungary, taking his fifth win of the season from Rob Huff and Alain Menu.
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At the rolling start, Muller kept his nose clean to avoid the mayhem behind, which took out the Lukoil Racing Team SEAT Leon of Gabriele Tarquini, the two Special Tuning Racing cars of Darryl O’Young and Tom Boardman plus Stefano d’Aste in the Wiechers-Sport BMW 320TC. Norbert Michelisz, who was contacted from behind, hit O’Young and the Hong Kong driver was out due to the damage sustained.
Local hero Michelisz was also able to conitune and dropped down the order to twelfth, whilst Mehdi Bennani tried to get in between the trio of Chevrolets.
Once everything at the front had sorted itself out with Bennani slotting into fourth, the main action came in the midfield. As the Chevrolets pulled away and Bennani wasn’t being caught, the attentions turned to Michelisz and his recovery drive.
At the start of the second lap, Michelisz was tenth but had gained another two places by the end of the third lap and set about chasing down and pressurising the Yokohama Independents’ points leader, Pepe Oriola.
While Michelisz tried to force a mistake from Oriola, recovering from the pack of the field was ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel. The Dutchman had struggled in qualifying and was sent right to the back for a technical infringement but he was on a charge and worked his way inside the top ten with four laps remaining.
On the penultimate lap, Michelisz took sixth away from Oriola and was immediately on the tail of Tiago Monteiro, who lacked the pace of the leaders in his SunRed 1.6litre turbocharged SEAT Leon, and he set about finding a way to take fifth.
The final lap saw Michelisz lose a position to the recovering Coronel while up at the front, Muller led home a straightforward Chevrolet 1, 2, 3 finish from Huff and Menu to further extend his Championship advantage.
Bennani secured his best result to-date in the WTCC with fourth and first of the Yokohama Independents’ with Monteiro, Coronel, Michelisz, Oriola, Alex MacDowall and Gabor Weber rounding out the top ten.
With his fifth win of the season, Muller has further extended his Championship advantage and it stands at thirty five points with Huff second and Menu third. Coronel has opened up a slight gap over Tarquini in the battle to be best of the rest while in the Yokohama Independents, Pepe Oriola continues to the lead the way from Michelisz, who has moved into second overall after d’Aste failed to score.
Race two from Hungary is live on Eurosport from 1.15pm BST.