Farfus triumphs as SEATs slip up

Farfus never put a foot wrong as he passed Norbert Michelisz and Colin Turkington early on to move up to third spot.

The RBM BMW driver, who had not won since Okayama last year, then watched on as long-time leader Michel Nykjaer slid off the road at Attwood on lap nine in his SUNRED SEAT.

Tarquini inherited the lead but kept it for just two laps before driving straight into the barriers at the tight Hobbs right-hander. His crash means he can no longer retain his WTCC crown this year.

What the accident also did was elevate Farfus to a lead he would not lose.

Turkington ended the race just 0.275 seconds behind him, but that was largely due to a late safety car that bunched the field up. Prior to that he had run around a second behind the Brazilian, and the WSR BMW driver had his work cut out to keep Yvan Muller's Chevrolet behind him. Using a succession of wet weather lines, the former British Touring Car champion managed to do just that, equalling the best WTCC result of his career.

With Andy Priaulx spinning into the gravel and out of the race early on, Muller's third place gave him a 37-point lead over the BMW man heading into the Macau season finale. A podium finish in either race on the street circuit will make Muller world champion for a second time.

Race one winner Rob Huff was fourth, ahead of his Chevrolet team-mate Alain Menu and Robert Dahlgren, who drove superbly in his Polestar Volvo.

With Dalhgren not registered for the championship, Nykjaer was the next of the points scorers in seventh, although the Dane did manage another trip across the gravel before the end.

So too did Michelisz, who wound up eighth in his Zengo-Dension SEAT. Tom Coronel (SR-Sport SEAT) was ninth with Darryl O'Young completing the top 10 and taking the independents' win in his bamboo-engineering Chevrolet.

O'Young now trails category leader Sergio Hernandez by just a handful of points after the Spaniard spun out of the race while lying second in class.

Pos  Driver              Car          Time/Gap
 1.  Augusto Farfus      BMW        33m47.799s
 2.  Colin Turkington    BMW          + 0.275s
 3.  Yvan Muller         Chevrolet    + 0.999s
 4.  Rob Huff            Chevrolet    + 2.097s
 5.  Alain Menu          Chevrolet    + 3.101s
 6.  Robert Dahlgren     Volvo        + 3.440s
 7.  Michel Nykjaer      SEAT         + 4.449s
 8.  Norbert Michelisz   SEAT         + 5.707s
 9.  Tom Coronel         SEAT         + 6.176s
10.  Darryl O'Young      Chevrolet    + 7.336s
11.  Franz Engstler      BMW          + 7.888s
12.  Kristian Poulsen    BMW          + 8.081s
13.  Michael Rossi       SEAT         + 8.546s
14.  Fredy Barth         SEAT         + 9.584s
15.  Masataka Yanagida   BMW         + 10.903s
16.  Andrei Romanov      BMW         + 10.973s
17.  Yukinori Taniguchi  Chevrolet   + 13.311s
18.  Stefano D'Aste      BMW         + 13.954s
19.  Nobuteru Taniguchi  BMW         + 27.382s
20.  Mehdi Bennani       BMW         + 31.379s
21.  Kevin Chen          BMW           + 1 lap
22.  Henry Ho            BMW          + 3 laps

Retirements:

     Sergio Hernandez    BMW        11 laps
     Gabriele Tarquini   SEAT       10 laps
     Tiago Monteiro      SEAT       10 laps
     Yoshihiro Ito       BMW        7 laps
     Andy Priaulx        BMW        3 laps