Huff soaks up constant pressure from Muller to take 20th WTCC win in Austria

Benefiting from a 10-12km/h slipstream, Muller edged marginally ahead of Huff on a number of occasions into the long, right-hand, Turn 9.

The triple world champion was handed a strong opportunity of taking the lead when Huff made a small mistake at the preceding chicane, but despite a short trip through the gravel, Huff maintained momentum to cover his inside lines at Turns 9, 10 and 11 and retain the lead.

Alain Menu completed a factory RML Chevrolet lock-out of the podium positions. On the final lap, Menu lost ground to the leaders on the exit of Turn 5, but the Swiss finished within a second of Huff, having played a waiting game through much of the race.

Lukoil Racing's Gabriele Tarquini held off fellow SEAT racer Tiago Monteiro (Tuenti Racing) by half a second to claim fourth.

WTCC rookie Alex MacDowall scored the Independents' Trophy victory, and sixth overall, aboard the bamboo-engineering Cruze.

Monteiro's Tuenti Racing team-mate Pepe Oriola finished seventh and continues to lead the Independents' drivers' standings.

Russian Aleksei Dudukalo in the second Lukoil Racing entry was involved in an accident with Hungaroring podium finisher Mehdi Bennani (Proteam BMW) but will assume his race two pole spot.

Special Tuning's Darryl O'Young suffered a troubled afternoon. Shortly after making contact with Stefano D'Aste (Wiechers-Sport), the Hong Kong racer was punted out of the race by Charles Ng (Team Engstler). O'Young was taken to the medical centre with a swollen ankle and will not start race two.

Muller leads the standings on 212 points. Huff is now second on 180, five points clear of Menu.

Results - 14 laps:

Pos  Driver                Team/Car               Time/Gap
 1.  Rob Huff              Chevrolet            23m26.809s
 2.  Yvan Muller           Chevrolet              + 0.312s
 3.  Alain Menu            Chevrolet              + 0.739s
 4.  Gabriele Tarquini     Lukoil SEAT            + 2.919s
 5.  Tiago Monteiro        Tuenti SEAT            + 3.483s
 6.  Alex MacDowall        bamboo Chevrolet       + 3.774s
 7.  Pepe Oriola           Tuenti SEAT            + 4.741s
 8.  Tom Coronel           ROAL BMW               + 6.923s
 9.  Norbert Michelisz     Zengo BMW              + 8.419s
10.  James Nash            Arena Ford             + 8.914s
11.  Franz Engstler        Engstler BMW           + 9.796s
12.  Pasquale di Sabatino  bamboo Chevrolet      + 10.429s
13.  Alberto Cerqui        ROAL BMW              + 12.813s
14.  Charles Ng            Engstler BMW          + 13.178s
15.  Gabor Weber           Zengo BMW             + 13.983s
16.  Tom Chilton           Arena Ford            + 16.756s
17.  Mehdi Bennani         Proteam BMW           + 18.390s

Retirements:

     Tom Boardman          Special Tuning SEAT     13 laps
     Aleksei Dudukalo      Lukoil SEAT             11 laps
     Stefano D'Aste        Wiechers BMW             5 laps
     Darryl O'Young        Special Tuning SEAT      4 laps