Zengő Motorsport’s Norbert Michelisz won the first World Touring Car Championship race of the day at Suzuka, ahead of bamboo-engineering’s Alex MacDowall and RML’s Yvan Muller, who secured the 2013 title.
Click here for the full Round 19 Results.
Michelisz held his position at the rolling start and was able to pull away from the Yokohama Independents’ pole sitter Alex MacDowall to take his third career win by 4.832s, with the bamboo-engineering driver absorbing everything Muller could throw at him. Muller’s team-mate Chilton kept a close eye on what was happening ahead of him and even got involved for the podium battle on the last couple of laps, but had to settle for fourth.
While at the front Michelisz could control the pace, in the pack the action was frentic as Gabriele Tarquini had to defend from Pepe Oriola and latterly James Nash, thus backing the pack up. This would eventually bring the end of Tiago Monteiro’s race as he went around the outside of Oriola at the final turn, with the Spaniard giving the Portuguese racer no room. Monteiro ended up in retirement with front-right damage, whilst Oriola was given a drive through-penalty for the incident, and he retired to the pits soon after.
Tarquini would soon join Monteiro in the pits as he suffered a puncture and this promoted the LADA of James Thompson into the top six, with ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel chasing him down, the BMW 320TC using their tyres better than the front-wheel-drive cars.
The Dutchman would be demoted in the closing laps as Rob Huff in the Münnich Motorsport SEAT Leon went around the outside of him to take seventh, with Coronel leading home Marc Basseng and Fernando Monje – the latter taking his first points finish of the season in the Campos Racing SEAT León.
The fourth Honda of Takuya Iwaza finished as the top Japanese driver in 12th and as the first ever winner in the WTCC Asia Trophy, while top of the naturally aspirated runners was Jeronimo Badaraco in 20th overall.
Heading into the 200th race of the WTCC, Muller has an unassailable advantage of 161 points over Tarquini with 135 points left to race for, while Chilton has moved into P3, ahead of the absent Michel Nykjær.
James Nash has extended his lead in the Yokohama Independents’ with second in class behind team-mate MacDowall.
Round 20 of the 2013 WTCC, race 200 in its history gets underway at 07.35 BST, 08.35 CEST, 16.35 JST.