Yvan Muller extended his lead in the World Touring Car Championship with his seventh win of the year, beating team-mates Alain Menu and Rob Huff in Chevrolet’s sixth 1-2-3 of the season.
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Michel Nykjaer led Alex MacDowall home for a bamboo engineering 1, 2 in the Yokohama Independents class.
The original start was waved by due to cars being out of line and on the second attempt, the Frenchman was able to defend his position to lead into the first corner, with Menu second. Huff was able to hold third from Gabriele Tarquini in the Lukoil Racing Team SEAT Leon.
From then, the three Chevrolet’s controlled the pace and slowly pulled away from Tarquini while the Italian wasn’t under any pressure from the bamboo engineering duo.
The main action was at the lower end of the top ten as the top two in the Yokohama Independents, Pepe Oriola in the SEAT Tuenti Racing Team SEAT Leon and Norbert Michelisz in the Zengo Motorsport BMW 320TC fought it out, Oriola passed the Hungarian at the final corner on lap four before Michelisz repaid the move on lap 9.
Once Michelisz was clear of Oriola, he set about chasing down Tom Coronel in the ROAL Motorsport BMW 320TC for eighth, but was unable to move ahead of the Dutch driver. Oriola finished tenth, just ahead of his returning team-mate, 2012 European Touring Car Cup Champion Fernando Monje. Alexey Dudukalo rounded out the top 12.
Darryl O’Young had a quiet race in seventh and he Special Tuning Racing driver finished as the third Yokohama Independent driver.
Muller has further extended his Championship advantage over Huff to 30 points ahead of the second race, which will see Michelisz starting on Pole Position ahead of Coronel.
The main incident of note came on the opening lap when Alberto Cerqui and Tiago Monteiro came together and the Portuguese driver retired on the spot while Cerqui retired in the pits.
Round 16 will get underway at 8.20 UK time on Eurosport.