Nika Racing’s Michel Nykjær took victory in the first World Touring Car Championship race at the Salzburgring, resisting heavy pressure from James Nash and Yvan Muller to take his second WTCC victory.
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Having started from pole position, the Dane drove a controlled race to take victory from Nash. Conscious of tyre wear, Nykjær never opened up a gap much more than half a second.
“Near the end of the race I could see Yvan was behind us – I thought ‘oh no, now Yvan will come’,” said Nykjær. “Of course we had a problem with the tyres last year so we were a little bit nervous with the tyres. But we managed to come through the race. When he [Nash] slipstreamed me I had to block.”
Nykjær added that he had run quite conservatively on his tyres – admitting that perhaps his race set-up was too slow.
“We were nervous about the tyres. I could not feel anything on my tyres so I think we have a good set-up – but maybe we are a bit too slow. Now we can look at the data on the tyres but we have not much time until the second race.”
RML’s Muller came through from 13th on the grid to third, passing Mehdi Bennani on the final lap of the race. Bennani held on to finish in fourth – the Moroccan driver’s second-best result of the season so far.
Alex MacDowall finished in fifth, although the Brit had been leading the charge of Chevrolet drivers storming through the field at one stage. As the bamboo-engineering driver tried to pass Fredy Barth half-way through the race the pair of them lost out to Muller, who showed his experience to make up two positions with ease. MacDowall was later able to pass Barth, with the Swiss driver finishing in sixth.
RML’s Tom Chilton finished in seventh, ahead of Münnich Motorsport’s Rob Huff, although Chilton was only able to complete the pass with a tap on the back of Huff’s car into the turn one chicane.
James Thompson scored LADA’s best result of the season thus far in ninth, ahead of ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel who scored the final point in tenth.
Pepe Oriola finished in 11th and was the first driver who was heavily penalised on Saturday to not make the points. No Honda drivers finished inside the top ten, with Gabriele Tarquini leading Tiago Monteiro and Norbert Michelisz home in 12th, 13th and 14th respectively.
A late race incident saw Charles Kaki Ng tag the back of team-mate Franz Engstler, sending the German spinning into the path of ROAL’s Darryl O’Young. Both drivers were out of the race on the spot, with Engstler suffering significant rear-end damage to his BMW.
Hugo Valente also failed to finish the race after crashing into the back of Stefano D’Aste at the turn one chicane.