A lights-to-flag victory for Björk in Ningbo Race 1

Thed Björk and his MRacing-YMR Hyundai i30 N continued their domination of the WTCR weekend at Ningbo International Speedpark.
The Swedish driver claimed a lights-to-flag victory in the first race and remained unbeaten so far on the Chinese track, after being the fastest in both the Free Practice sessions and Qualifying.
Björk made good use of his pole to lead the field into T1, while the other competitors were fighting for the positions. Esteban Guerrieri muscled his way past front row starter Frédéric Vervisch who also lost third position to Norbert Michelisz.
However, the Hungarian retired at the end of lap 1 with a technical problem and was imitated by Jean-Karl Vernay who stopped along the track while was in ninth position.
Mehdi Bennani overtook his teammate Rob Huff for fifth and tried to close the gap from Gabriele Tarquini.
From lap 3, the race was mostly processional and only Yann Ehrlacher was able to move up from tenth to eighth overtaking Aurélien Panis and Denis Dupont.
Björk scored his third win of the season from Guerrieri, Vervisch and Tarquini who stretched his leading margin in the standings to 9 points over Yvan Muller who was classified seventh.
Action will resume tomorrow, with Qualifying for Race 2 and 3 at 09:00 local time (03:00 CET).