ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel took his first win in the World Touring Car Championship since October 2011 when he won the second race in Slovakia, beating Yvan Muller and Gabriele Tarquini to the win.
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Starting from pole position, Dutchman Coronel led the entire race and was able to open up a comfortable lead as the drivers behind him battled for the remaining podium positions.
“Our car was nice and consistent,” said Coronel. “We knew that the front-wheel drive cars would drop off a little bit and then I saw it and said ‘now I have to push’, to take the gap to not allow a slipstream. Finally, we got it. Sometimes I make mistakes but this time I think I didn’t make any mistakes so I am very happy. I was just counting how many laps to go!”
The result means that there have now been five different winners in the opening six races of 2013. It is also BMW’s first win in the series since Japan in 2012.
While Coronel was making good his escape at the front, Oriola and Rob Huff were involved in a tight battle with Muller, Tarquini and Tom Chilton for the podium positions while Stefano D’Aste and Norbert Michelisz had their own small scrap which brought the BMW of Mehdi Bennani and the Chevrolet of Alex MacDowall into play.
Oriola was demoted just after half distance and Huff then took up the challenge of defending his podium position from his former title rival and team-mate Muller while Tarquini hunted them down.
Muller made his move at turn one with two laps to go, and Tarquini followed the Frenchman through for his second podium finish of the weekend. This left Huff still chasing his first podium for the ALL-INKL.com Münnich Motorsport team.
Coronel secured his third WTCC career victory by 2.9s from Muller and Tarquini while Huff brought home the car fourth with the second Castrol Honda of Monteiro fifth. Monteiro had made his way up to fourth by the end of the opening lap, but contact from Muller on lap two demoted him to seventh.
Rounding out the top ten were Oriola in sixth, Chilton in seventh, top Yokohama Independent runner MacDowall in eighth ahead of Bennani in ninth and Darryl O’Young in the second ROAL Motorsport BMW 320TC in tenth.
After his race one podium, Michelisz finished 20th after slowing at the start of the final lap whilst running in eighth. The top Yokohama Independent runner from race one, James Nash, finished 17th after two trips through the gravel on the opening lap, including being tagged by Tarquini at turn one.
After his second place finish, Muller has opened up his Championship advantage to 24 points over Tarquini while third in the Championship is Nykjaer despite a tough weekend, Chilton has closed to within 2 points of the Danish driver.