Hungaroring WTCC: Huff claims first win of 2013 season

A massive crash for Gabriele Tarquini, whose Honda Civic was sent spearing into the barriers on the outside of Turn 3 on the opening lap, brought out a four-lap caution period.

Tarquini was able to walk away from his crash, but was subsequently put in a neck brace and then taken to hospital for checks.

Team principal Alessandro Mariani later confirmed to AUTOSPORT that Tarquini had undergone an X-Ray as a precautionary measure, but had no broken bones.

Mehdi Bennani had held the lead at the time of Tarquini's crash, after both he and second-row starter Huff jumped Alex MacDowall's Bamboo Chevrolet away from the line.

Bennani's early advantage was wiped out by the safety car however, and Huff picked him off brilliantly around the outside of Turn 1 to snatch the lead at the restart.

From therein both men were rarely separated by more than half a second, but Huff resisted the pressure to capture his first win of 2013, and the first WTCC victory for new squad Munnich SEAT.

Bennani was second, while MacDowall came home a relatively quiet third.

Team-mate James Nash in contrast was never allowed to relax as Yvan Muller led a swarm of cars hounding him throughout.

Several times Muller had a look down the inside, but Nash proved equal to every occasion, holding on to beat the Frenchman by just over three tenths of a second.

Muller's life was made slightly easier when team-mate Tom Chilton and ROAL BMW's Tom Coronel tagged each other four laps from the end.

Coronel dropped behind Chilton, and away from Muller's tail, as a result, although he fought his way back two laps later to claim sixth ahead of Chilton.

Home favourite Norbert Michelisz also attached himself to the fight, but rather than being able to follow Coronel through past Chilton he had to run wide to avoid hitting the RML Chevrolet and could not improve upon eighth as a result.

Fellow Honda driver Tiago Monteiro fought back from starting in the pitlane - the legacy of his race one crash - to claim 12th.

Results - 14 laps:

Pos Driver              Team/Car               Time/Gap
 1. Rob Huff            Munnich SEAT          29m35.871s
 2. Mehdi Bennani       Proteam BMW            + 0.426s
 3. Alex MacDowall      Bamboo Chevrolet       + 4.043s
 4. James Nash          Bamboo Chevrolet       + 4.465s
 5. Yvan Muller         RML Chevrolet          + 4.783s
 6. Tom Coronel         ROAL BMW               + 5.490s
 7. Tom Chilton         RML Chevrolet          + 6.835s
 8. Norbert Michelisz   Zengo Honda            + 7.232s
 9. Michel Nykjaer      Nika Chevrolet         + 8.413s
10. Darryl O'Young      ROAL BMW               + 8.663s
11. Stefano D'Aste      PB BMW                 + 10.180s
12. James Thompson      Lada                   + 14.305s
13. Tiago Monteiro      Honda                  + 14.886s
14. Charles Ng          Engstler BMW           + 20.289s
15. Tom Boardman        Special Tuning SEAT    + 23.547s
16. Pepe Oriola         Tuenti SEAT            + 24.227s
17. Marc Basseng        Munnich SEAT           + 25.395s
18. Fernando Monje      Campos SEAT            + 26.536s
19. Hugo Valente        Campos SEAT            + 31.352s
20. Mikhail Kozlovskiy  Lada                   + 32.330s
21. Rene Munnich        Munnich SEAT           + 32.710s
22. Fredy Barth         Wiechers BMW           + 3 laps

Retirements:

    Franz Engstler      Engstler BMW             0 laps
    Gabriele Tarquini   Honda                    0 laps