Menu wins race one in Hungary

Menu converted his first pole position since 2009 into the lead at the first corner, with Chevrolet team-mate Yvan Muller's victory chances ruined when he was tapped wide by BMW driver Tom Coronel.

With a number of the frontrunners running wide at the first corner, home hero Norbert Michelisz held a tight line to climb to second place.

The BMW driver looked to have a speed advantage in the early stages, closing the gap to Menu from over a second to run on the Chevrolet's bumper at the end of lap four. But from there, Menu was able to control that gap and crossed the line a second ahead of the Hungarian.

Garbriele Tarquini, who also benefited from the first corner confusion to jump from ninth to third, held the final podium position for much of the race. Defending brilliantly, the Italian kept Javier Villa's quicker BMW behind him for 11 laps, but came under attack at the first corner when the Spaniard dived up the inside.

Tarquini turned in and the pair made contact, but despite both running wide the Chevrolets of Muller and Rob Huff, who had climbed from 12th on the grid, were unable to get ahead.

Villa ended up ahead of Tarquini, but ran wide exiting Turn 5, which allowed Tarquini to repass him, only for the BMW driver to attempt to outbrake him into Turn 6, lock up and force both wide.

Villa managed to hold on to third place, his first WTCC podium finish, ahead of Huff, who passed Muller on the final lap on the inside of Turn 6. Tarquini recovered from being pushed off track to take sixth ahead of SUNRED SEAT team-mate Tiago Monteiro.

Behind them, Fredy Barth took the first points for the Lehmann-developed 1.6-litre turbo SEAT engine ahead of Kristian Poulsen and Pepe Oriola. The trio capitalised on Tom Coronel's late retirement and a drive-through penalty for Darryl O'Young to pick up the final points positions.

Results - 12 laps:

Pos  Driver              Team/Car             Time/Gap
 1.  Alain Menu          Chevrolet          23m45.874s
 2.  Norbert Michelisz   Zengo BMW            + 1.047s
 3.  Javier Villa        Proteam BMW         + 17.383s
 4.  Rob Huff            Chevrolet           + 17.983s
 5.  Yvan Muller         Chevrolet           + 18.365s
 6.  Gabriele Tarquini   SUNRED SEAT         + 18.780s
 7.  Tiago Monteiro      SUNRED SEAT         + 19.374s
 8.  Fredy Barth         SUNRED SEAT         + 24.349s
 9.  Kristian Poulsen    Engstler BMW        + 24.481s
10.  Pepe Oriola         SUNRED SEAT         + 26.555s
11.  Yukinori Taniguchi  Bamboo Chevrolet    + 35.306s
12.  Franz Engstler      Engstler BMW        + 36.399s
13.  Darryl O'Young      Bamboo Chevrolet    + 43.368s
14.  Michel Nykjaer      SUNRED SEAT         + 44.247s
15.  Mehdi Bennani       Proteam BMW         + 46.490s
16.  Aleksei Dudukalo    SUNRED SEAT       + 1m10.090s
17.  Fabio Fabiani       Proteam BMW       + 1m54.908s

Retirements:

     Tom Coronel         ROAL BMW               9 laps
     Robert Dahlgren     Polestar Volvo         5 laps