Huff wins wet Okayama race one

The Chevrolet driver started third in the race, which began behind the safety car due to the adverse weather conditions. Once the field was released on lap three, Huff went straight by Augusto Farfus's RBM BMW at Attwood corner and quickly closed up on polesitter Andy Priaulx's sister car.

After banging doors with the three-time world champion exiting Williams corner, Huff made the move stick going into Piper on lap five and pulled away to a 2.977-second victory - his second of the season.

Priaulx made it a British one-two, but with Yvan Muller completing the podium, Priaulx only cut the Frenchman's championship lead to 22 points with 75 still available.

Muller's drive was a charging one, the Chevrolet driver coming from eighth on the grid to third in the race after carefully picking the right moments to pass Norbert Michelisz, Colin Turkington and Farfus.

Farfus, who finished fourth, had earlier been embroiled in a good battle with title contender Gabriele Tarquini. But the SR-Sport SEAT driver slid into the gravel at Williams on lap six, hit the tyre barrier and dropped to eighth, although with only minor damage.

Michelisz took a career-best fifth place in his Zengo-Dension SEAT while Turkington slipped from fourth on the grid to sixth in his WSR BMW.

Tarquini finished seventh though after Michel Nykjaer pulled his SUNRED SEAT out of the way to let the world champion past on the last lap.

Tiago Monteiro was eliminated on the first lap as he and Franz Engstler spun in unison at Turn 1. Further around the lap, Fredy Barth (SUNRED) and Kristian Poulsen (Poulsen BMW) made contact at Piper, the latter spinning into Stefano D'Aste (Proteam BMW), who ended up in the wall.

All of that helped to hand a first independent victory to local driver Yukinori Taniguchi, in 11th place overall. His bamboo-engineering team-mate Darryl O'Young was right on his tail to help the team take its first one-two in the class.

Pos  Driver              Car           Time/Gap
 1.  Rob Huff            Chevrolet   31m46.668s
 2.  Andy Priaulx        BMW           + 2.977s
 3.  Yvan Muller         Chevrolet     + 4.931s
 4.  Augusto Farfus      BMW           + 8.596s
 5.  Norbert Michelisz   SEAT          + 9.742s
 6.  Colin Turkington    BMW          + 11.310s
 7.  Gabriele Tarquini   SEAT         + 13.876s
 8.  Michel Nykjaer      SEAT         + 14.901s
 9.  Alain Menu          Chevrolet    + 30.022s
10.  Robert Dahlgren     Volvo        + 31.077s
11.  Yukinori Taniguchi  Chevrolet  + 1m13.148s
12.  Darryl O'Young      Chevrolet  + 1m15.995s
13.  Sergio Hernandez    BMW        + 1m17.546s
14.  Nobuteru Taniguchi  BMW        + 1m17.857s
15.  Franz Engstler      BMW        + 1m19.035s
16.  Kristian Poulsen    BMW        + 1m26.602s
17.  Mehdi Bennani       BMW        + 1m30.373s
18.  Masataka Yanagida   BMW        + 1m30.957s
19.  Henry Ho            BMW            + 1 lap
20.  Yoshihiro Ito       BMW            + 1 lap
21.  Tom Coronel         SEAT           + 1 lap

Retirements:

     Kevin Chen          BMW        9 laps
     Andrei Romanov      BMW        9 laps
     Michael Rossi       SEAT       6 laps
     Tiago Monteiro      SEAT       2 laps
     Fredy Barth         SEAT       2 laps
     Stefano D'Aste      BMW        2 laps