RML’s Yvan Muller scored his fourth victory of the season as he beat ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel to victory in the delayed opening World Touring Car Championship race in Russia.
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A first corner accident, triggered when Wiechers-Sport’s Fredy Barth tapped the back of Engstler Motorsport’s Charles Kaki Ng, caused a significant stoppage of the race. ROAL Motorsport’s Darryl O’Young and Campos Racing’s Nikolay Karamyshev were also caught up in the incident as innocent parties.
The significant delay came after only five laps when the recovery vehicle which was sent to clear up the accident broke down. The race was subsequently red-flagged for approximately half an hour, after which point the vehicle still couldn’t be moved, resulting in the race being resumed under permanent yellow flags in turn one.
When the race eventually resumed, Muller was able to hold off from a determined Coronel, who piled on the pressure to the former champion. Despite his best effort, however, Coronel had to settle for second as he found no overtaking areas around the Moscow Raceway.
Zengő Motorsport’s Norbert Michelisz scored his fourth podium of the season in thrid, with the Hungarian having to withstand significant pressure from fourth-placed Rob Huff throughout the race.
James Thompson scored LADA’s best-ever result in the WTCC in fifth, with the result coming at the manufacturer’s home race. Honda’s Gabriele Tarquini was sixth, after being unable to find a way past Thompson later in the race.
Michel Nykjær and Pepe Oriola finished seventh and eighth, with Brits James Nash and Tom Chilton completing the top ten in their Chevrolet’s.
Despite being caught up in the first corner accident, both O’Young and Karamyshev’s teams were able to take advantage of the red-flag period for repairs on their cars, finishing the race down in 20th and 21st and crucially being more prepared for race two.
O’Young explained after the incident that he had nowhere to go to avoid being collected.
“I don’t really know what happened,” said O’Young. “I was just going through the corner, there were cars spinning in front and all of a sudden Charles just pulled in front of me.”
Charles Ng will also take part in the second race after his Engstler Motorsport team managed to fix the extensive front-end damage to his BMW.
Race two was scheduled to start at 14:20 MSK (11:20 BST, 12:20 CEST) and will likely start half an hour later than scheduled.
UPDATE: Pepe Oriola, Marc Basseng and Nikolay Karamyshev were all handed post-race 30-second penalties for jump-starting at the rolling start. Oriola dropped from eighth to 17th, Basseng from 14th to 18th and Kramyshev remained last.