Mat’o Homola claims his maiden WTCR win

Mat’o Homola obtained an authoritative victory in Vila Real Race 2, the maiden one for him in the WTCR and the second for DG Sport Compétition and Peugeot. The young Slovak took a great start from the second row of the top ten reverse grid and squeezed in second position between pole sitter Gordon Shedden and Yvan Muller.
An incident during the opening lap eliminated Esteban Guerrieri who was hit by Frédéric Vervisch; the latter was then given a drive through for causing the collision.
Homola took the lead when Shedden made his joker lap and managed to resist the pressure from Muller for a number of laps. When Homola made the joker lap himself, Muller inherited the lead and tried to increase his leading margin.
The result was decided on the penultimate lap, when Muller went for his own joker lap and Homola regained the lead. Pepe Oriola finished third, just like in yesterday’s Race 1, courtesy of a 5-second penalty inflicted to Shedden for cutting a chicane, which dropped the Scotsman from third to sixth.
Jean-Karl Vernay and Norbert Michelisz were classified fourth and fifth, while Yann Ehrlacher, Aurélien Panis, Gabriele Tarquini and Thed Björk rounded off the top ten.
Muller was able to further increase his point tally to 182 and stretched his leading margin to 29 points ahead of Ehrlacher, with Vernay and Tarquini third and fourth, 37 and 45 points behind respectively.
Race 3 will start at 17:10 local time (18:10 CET).