Yvan Muller was ‘especially happy’ with the results that he and Thed Björk attained in the opening weekend of the FIA World Touring Car Cup (WTCR) in Morocco, with the duo picking up three podiums between them.
The Frenchman’s Yvan Muller Racing team enjoyed a strong start to the new era of touring car racing in Marrakech, with Swede Björk scoring the first outright pole position in WTCR on Saturday.
Björk lost out at the start of the race to Gabriele Tarquini and ultimately had to settle for second, whilst Muller himself just missed out on points in 11th.
Although there was no repeat pole position in Sunday’s qualifying session, both Björk and Muller finished in the points in the reverse-grid second race before going on to take a double podium in race three with Muller in second and Björk in third after a small mistake from the latter let Muller through.
“Beyond my own result, I am especially happy for the team,” said Muller. “The last few weeks have been very complicated, and we even wondered if we would succeed because the amount of work was gigantic.
“Eight days ago, we were not even sure we were on the grid, and here we won three podiums and a pole position. We could hardly have hoped for that.”
Muller pointed to the fact that, with WTCR not being the team’s only focus in 2018, it would be a busy year which has started on a strong note with the podium finishes.
“I think we can be proud of what we did, because, as if that were not enough, we have two other programs this year, with the LMP3 and GT4, but we managed to manage, and this WTCR program is off to a good start.”
Björk leaves Morocco second overall in the drivers’ standings on 51 points, whilst Muller is sixth on 29 points.