Tarquini wins again in a Hyundai 1-2-3

Gabriele Tarquini converted his pole position into a second victory in the WTCR inaugural event at Marrakech. In today’s Race 3, the Italian veteran led home a trio of Hyundai i30 N TCR cars, beating the YMR pair of Yvan Muller and Thed Björk. Muller’s nephew Yann Ehrlacher collected another fourth place after that in Race 2.
The safety car was deployed twice once again, in both cases to recover two of the Cometoyou Racing Audi cars: Frédéric Vervisch’s and Nathanaël Berthon’s.
The race was mostly processional and the first ten positions remained nearly frozen from the first lap to the end. The only change concerned Björk and Muller, as the Swede made a mistake and handed the second place to his teammate on the penultimate lap.
However, there were some exciting fights. Tarquini was closely chased by Björk for most of the race, while Ehrlacher put a lot of pressure on his uncle. Behind the leading quartet, Norbert Michelisz was successful to defend the fifth place from Mehdi Bennani and Rob Huff; Pepe Oriola did the same for tenth, keeping John Filippi and Tom Coronel at bay until the end.
Benjamin Lessennes started from the pit lane, as the team managed to repair his car following the Race 1 incident. Aurélien Comte and Zsolt Dávid Szabó were both missing.
With two victories and one pole position, Tarquini walked away from Morocco as the first leader in the Drivers’ championship with 62 points, 11 more than Björk and 21 more than Vernay. Ehrlacher lies fourth, a further four points behind.
The WTCR will resume in three weeks at the Hungaroring.

Quotes:
Gabriele Tarquini: “It was the best way to start the championship. In yesterday’s Race 1 the key was the start. Today I knew I had to win pole position for Race 3. I saved my tyres in Q1 and Q2 before focusing on Q3. Once I won the pole, I knew I could start well and control the third race. However, something went wrong in Race 2, I collided with another car and damaged the suspension. So I decided to stop and give the team the time to repair the car. They did a great job, although there was not enough time to change the brakes. Eventually all went well and now I’m leading the championship…”

Picture: WTCR/DPPI