After the rain of Monza, the World Touring Car Championship heads to Africa and the streets of Marrakech with Yvan Muller already holding a strong Championship advantage.
Muller, driving one of the RML entered Chevrolet Cruzes had the perfect Monza weekend as he scored the maximum 55 points – 5 for Pole Position then a double victory – and he arrives in Morocco with a 23 point advantage over his RML team-mate Tom Chilton.
Chilton secured his maiden front row start and podium finish in the first race which he backed up with another top five finish – results which meant he secured his best weekend to date in the World Touring Car Championship.
Two other Chevrolet drivers secured podium finishes at Monza, with bamboo engineering’s Alex MacDowall securing his and the teams’ first outright podium in the opening round of the season as Chevrolet secured a 1, 2, 3 finish while series returnee Michel Nykjaer finished second behind Muller in the second race in the Nika Racing Cruze.
The fifth Chevrolet of James Nash secured a brace of top seven finishes to lie 7th in the Championship and at the top of the Yokohama Independents’ classification, ahead of team-mate MacDowall and Nykjaer.
Out of the six races held in Marrakech, Chevrolet has secured four of the victories – with 2010 the only season where the American manufacturer failed to secure a victory.
After their encouraging form at the end of the 2012 campaign, the Castrol Honda World Touring Car Team struggled in the rain at Monza, with Gabriele Tarquini struggling for top end speed despite bringing the #3 Civic home in 4th and 3rd place finishes.
Team-mate Tiago Monteiro scored a brace of top 8 results while the third Honda in the hands of Zengo Motorsport struggled all weekend and 2012 Yokohama Independents’ Champion Norbert Michelisz could only secure a solitary 8th place finish in the opening race.
The major talking point from Monza was the intra-team accident between LADA team-mates James Thompson and Aleksey Dudukalo saw both cars withdrawn for race day. Dudukalo has been dropped from the team and replaced by fellow Russian driver, Mikhail Koslovskiy. For Koslovskiy, Marrakech marks his WTCC debut while Thompson will look to replicate the pace shown at Monza before the accident.
In the six races held on the streets of Marrakech, BMW have taken a single victory which came in 2010, taken by Andy Priaulx. The Monza weather didn’t help the German cars and the best of them after Monza was Tom Coronel in the ROAL Motorsport BMW 320TC, as he took a 9th place finish in the opening race before an 11th place finish in race 2.
The other BMW point scorers came from Stefano D’Aste (PB Racing) who took a ninth place finish while Wiechers-Sport’s Fredy Barth took a point on his debut for the German outfit. He is the best placed BMW driver in the Yokohama Independents’ championship.
Other BMW’s on the grid include local hero Mehdi Bennani in the Proteam Racing car, Darryl O’Young in the sister ROAL Motorsport car while Liqui Moly Team Engstler are represented by Charles Kaki Ng and Franz Engstler, with Ng higher up in the Championship leaving Monza.
Jean-Philippe Dayraut in the ANOME car is absent from Marrakech, having joined the grid at Monza for a one weekend campaign with the potential to expand to a full campaign.
SEAT has taken a single win in Morocco with Gabriele Tarquini securing the first win of the 2010 Race of Morocco.
Reigning Champion Rob Huff in the ALL-INKL.com Munnich Motorsport SEAT Leon took the very first race win in Africa, back in 2009 while driving the Chevrolet Cruze. The Briton performed a brace of recovery drives at Monza after retiring from qualifying after contact with Barth.
Huff is tenth in the Championship while his team-mate and WTCC debutant, Marc Basseng, is joint seventh after showing front running pace in the second race and come close to securing his and the teams’ maiden podium finish. Neither Huff nor Basseng are eligible for the Yokohama Independents’ trophy.
Rene Munnich in the third car had a tougher weekend and he finished outside the top 15 in both races and his results mean that he scored a single point in the Yokohama Independents’ trophy.
Second highest SEAT driver in the Championship after Monza is youngster Pepe Oriola in the Tuenti Racing Team, the Spanish youngster scored a sixth place finish in race 2. The 2012 Yokohama Independents’ vice Champion isn’t able to compete in the Independents’ this year.
The Spanish manufacturer are also represented on the grid by Tom Boardman in the Special Tuning Racing car while Campos Racing have a single car this weekend for Fernando Monje, the team will expand to a two car outfit from Hungary onwards when Hugo Valente joins the field.
The Circuit Moulay El Hassan features two long straights with a number of tight chicanes and a tight hairpin at the end of the lap so slipstreaming will pay its part in qualifying and the races, while the unforgiving walls will take their victims if a driver makes a mistake and the Safety Car is a usual sight after a driver hits the wall.