Alain Menu leads Chevrolet podium sweep in race one in Porto
Alain Menu claimed his third victory of the season with a lights-to-flag effort in today's opening World Touring Car Championship race in Porto, while team-mates Yvan Muller and Rob Huff followed him across the line for another Chevrolet 1-2-3
Menu controlled the field right from the start and never looked under threat. A race-long battle between Muller and Huff for second gave Menu the freedom to pull away at the rate of a couple of tenths per lap, and once he had build a comfortable buffer he simply maintained his advantage. The eventual winning margin was 1.2 seconds.
Like most of the scraps during the race, the battle between Menu and Huff promised much but amounted to little. Whatever slight pace advantage Huff might have had was insufficient for him to mount a challenge, meaning that his hopes of claiming second rested on Muller making a mistake that never came.
The one significant passing move came from local favourite Tiago Monteiro, who managed to get around SUNRED SEAT team-mate Gabriele Tarquini for fourth on the opening lap, and then survived a couple of attempts from the Italian to reclaim the position.
Eighth-placed Norbert Michelisz (Zengo Dension BMW) was first of the Independents; the Hungarian spending much of the race trying unsuccessfully to pass Robert Dahlgren's Volvo.
SUNRED pair Alexsei Dudukalo and Fredy Barth were early casualties of an incident at the first chicane, and the same corner later accounted for former GP2 racer Javier Villa's Proteam BMW.
Results - 11 laps:
Pos Driver Team/Car Time/Gap
1. Alain Menu Chevrolet 23m22.763s
2. Yvan Muller Chevrolet + 1.262s
3. Rob Huff Chevrolet + 1.519s
4. Tiago Monteiro SUNRED SEAT + 5.710s
5. Gabriele Tarquini SUNRED SEAT + 10.457s
6. Tom Coronel ROAL BMW + 12.237s
7. Robert Dahlgren Polestar Volvo + 16.693s
8. Norbert Michelisz Zengo BMW + 17.256s
9. Michel Nykjaer SUNRED SEAT + 17.724s
10. Stefano D'Aste Proteam BMW + 18.232s
11. Kristian Poulsen Engstler BMW + 18.801s
12. Franz Engstler Engstler BMW + 20.360s
13. Darryl O'Young Chevrolet + 25.778s
14. Mehdi Bennani Proteam BMW + 26.084s
15. Pepe Oriola SUNRED SEAT + 27.343s
16. Yukinori Taniguchi Bamboo Chevrolet + 55.046s
Retirements:
Javier Villa Proteam BMW 6 laps
Fredy Barth SUNRED SEAT 3 laps
Aleksei Dudukalo SUNRED SEAT 0 laps
Share Or Save This Story
The Indy 500 poleman who didn't live to raceday
Fast Failures: American heartbreak at the Indianapolis 500
Indy Lights champion Spencer Pigot gets three race IndyCar deal
The ambition behind an ‘insane’ racing opportunity
Tanak involved in Toyota's development of its WRC 2027 car
The area Bezzecchi must improve upon to become MotoGP world champion
Neuville vows to bounce back from costly Rally Croatia error
Subscribe and access Autosport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments