Muller back to victory as a true ‘Ringmeister’

The ‘grandeur’ of a champion never fades: Yvan Muller took his first win of the season (and the first since he came back to racing) at the wheel of the Hyundai i30 N of his own M Racing YMR squad ahead of his teammate Thed Björk. The Frenchman built his success at the first corner, when he stole the lead from poleman Björk, but his race wasn’t exactly quiet: “It’s a perfect day for the team with a 1-2 in both qualifying and Race 1. I didn’t expect to be that fast, but I had a good start and then gave everything to stay in front. I believe this is the kind of race where experience helps!”
Rob Huff drove the Sébastian Loeb Racing Volkswagen Golf GTI to a podium finish, beating by a slim margin Norbert Michelisz, who saved BRC Racing’s day after Gabriele Tarquini went off the track at the end of the first lap.
At the start, Muller managed to pass Björk; they were followed by Michelisz, Huff, Jean-Kerl Vernay, Tarquini, Tom Coronel and Frédéric Vervisch; Esteban Guerrieri went sideways after a contact with Tarquini and retired.
On lap 1, Huff took third from Michelisz and closed the gap from the two leaders. Vernay, Tarquini, Vervisch and Audi’s guest star René Rast were fighting for the fifth position when the Italian lost his car and crashed. Moments later, Vervisch also retired amid a lot of smoke, his Audi’s radiator pierced by a piece of glass.
The first four were covered by the same second trying to benefit from each others’ slipstreaming on the long straight. Behind them, Vernay was chased by Rast, while Gordon Shedden overtook Coronel for seventh.
At the end of the last lap, Michelisz seemed able to overtake Huff, but the Volkswagen driver didn’t give up and crossed the line third, behind Muller and Björk. Vernay took fifth ahead of Rast and Shedden; Pepe Oriola climbed to eighth as he managed to pass both Coronel and Lessennes just before the line.
Despite the retirement, Tarquini maintained the lead in the standings with 118 points, but Muller has closed to only 14 points behind in second; Michelisz moved up to third, 29 points off the leader.
Action will resume tomorrow, with the second Qualifying at 17:35.