Pepe Oriola became the second first-time winner of the day, as he led home RML’s Yvan Muller and Tom Chilton to score his maiden World Touring Car Championship victory in Morocco.
Click here for the full Round 4 Results.
An eventful race saw Spaniard Fernando Monje lead away at the start, having started from pole position. Later around the lap, however, Oriola overtook his countryman to take the lead. Further around the opening lap Rob Huff made contact with the back of Monje’s car at the hairpin, putting the Brit out of the race with a broken left-front suspension. Monje also suffered in the move, dropping to 11th.
With all of the close racing and bumping, Frenchman Muller took advantage to move up to second at the end of the first lap, having started from eighth. Muller was soon challenging Oriola for the lead, with Chilton joining him having moved up to third on the fourth lap. Chilton even had a look at passing his team-mate on lap six, but after both had to take action to avoid each other, he never looked likely to pass Muller thereafter.
Oriola fended off significant pressure for the first nine laps before the safety car was required. Honda’s Gabriele Tarquini, who had been running in sixth, ran wide over one of the circuit’s notorious kerbs, launching him into the barriers on the outside, collecting an innocent Alex MacDowall in the process.
After a length safety car period, the race came down to a one-lap sprint to the flag. Oriola got a strong restart before holding off further pressure and becoming the youngest-ever WTCC race winner at just 18 years of age.
Bamboo-engineering’s James Nash finished in fourth to win the Yokohama trophy, ahead of Münnich Motorsport’s Marc Basseng in fifth and ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel in sixth.
Race one winner Michel Nykjaer took seventh, whilst Franz Engstler passed Darryl O’Young on the final lap of the race to take eighth. Charles Kaki Ng pipped local driver Mehdi Bennani also on the final lap, to secure first point of the season.
As usual there were numerous incidents around the Marrakech street circuit. Monje crashed heavily into the back of James Thompson’s LADA on lap two, taking both drivers out of the race. Norbert Michelisz was running in tenth when he was forced to retire due to a hole in his fuel tank. Neither Tiago Monteiro or Tom Boardman took the start of the race due to their race one and warm-up crashes respectively.