Jose Maria Lopez passes Yvan Muller to win first Hungary WTCC race
Jose Maria Lopez swept through from the second row of the grid to claim victory for Citroen in the first World Touring Car Championship race of the weekend in Hungary
Jose Maria Lopez swept through from the second row of the grid to claim victory for Citroen in the first World Touring Car Championship race of the weekend in Hungary.
After a false start and an additional formation lap, believed to have been caused by polesitter Yvan Muller taking up a position too far forwards on the grid, Lopez made a perfect getaway, diving up the inside into Turn 1.
The factory Citroens swallowed up Hugo Valente's Campos Racing Chevrolet to run 1-2-3-4 into Turn 1, but Sebastien Loeb edged into team-mate Ma Qing Hua and both ran wide.
Valente kept his head and moved into a third place he would retain for the duration of the race.
Ma recovered to run fourth, but had to contend with the challenge of Tiago Monteiro's Honda throughout and could not attack Valente.
Loeb followed in sixth, never quite close enough to join the fight.
The first-corner melee helped shuffle the grid order in the back half of the top 10 as Rob Huff's Lada dropped back from seventh to 10th, and Norbert Michelisz brought his Zengo Honda briefly to seventh before being deposed quite forcefully by Tom Chilton's Chevrolet.
Huff managed to pass Tom Coronel for ninth on the second lap but, as the race developed a processional flavour, made no further forward progress.
Having started at the back of the grid after yesterday's Q1 shunt, Honda's Gabriele Tarquini made the most progress in this race, but he could get no higher than 11th after passing Mehdi Bennani's semi-works Citroen on lap 6.
The stewards have elected to investigate Muller's starting procedure after race two.
RESULTS - 13 LAPS:
Pos | Driver | Team | Car | Gap |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Jose Maria Lopez | Citroen Total WTCC | Citroen | 24m11.868s |
2 | Yvan Muller | Citroen Total WTCC | Citroen | 3.958s |
3 | Hugo Valente | Campos Racing | Chevrolet | 10.290s |
4 | Ma Qinghua | Citroen Total WTCC | Citroen | 11.059s |
5 | Tiago Monteiro | Honda Racing Team JAS | Honda | 11.523s |
6 | Sebastien Loeb | Citroen Total WTCC | Citroen | 14.102s |
7 | Tom Chilton | ROAL Motorsport | Chevrolet | 14.805s |
8 | Norbert Michelisz | Zengo Motorsport | Honda | 15.548s |
9 | Rob Huff | LADA Sport Rosneft | Lada | 17.642s |
10 | Tom Coronel | ROAL Motorsport | Chevrolet | 18.104s |
11 | Mehdi Bennani | Sebastien Loeb Racing | Citroen | 23.764s |
12 | Gregoire Demoustier | Craft-Bamboo Racing | Chevrolet | 35.625s |
13 | John Filippi | Campos Racing | Chevrolet | 45.968s |
14 | Stefano D'Aste | All-Inkl.com Munnich Motorsport | Chevrolet | 48.486s |
- | Gabriele Tarquini | Honda Racing Team JAS | Honda | Disqualified |
- | Mikhail Kozlovskiy | LADA Sport Rosneft | Lada | Retirement |
- | James Thompson | LADA Sport Rosneft | Lada | Withdrawn |
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