Brno: Huff wins Race 1 as Muller retires

Chevrolet’s Rob Huff secured his first victory of the season in Race 1 at Brno today ahead of Gabriele Tarquini and Alain Menu. Michel Nykjær took the Rookie honours in seventh while Darryl O’Young fought hard to take the Independents’ victory in eighth, also claiming pole position for his bamboo-engineering team in Race 2 later today.

Championship leader Yvan Muller retired after a racing incident.

Huff controlled the rolling start holding off Tarquini and Colin Turkington. Menu moved ahead of Augusto Farfus for fourth while further back a four car incident brought out the safety car before the end of the first lap.

Andy Priaulx touched the back of Tom Coronel’s SEAT causing Kristian Poulsen, Fredy Barth and Jordi Gené to also make contact. Priaulx, Poulsen and Barth continued but Gené and Coronel’s races ended in the gravel at T4.

The order behind the safety car was Huff leading from Tarquini, Turkington, Menu, Farfus, Michelisz, Muller, Nykjær, Praiulx, Monteiro and O’Young.

On the restart, Turkington dropped back into the grasps of Michelisz and as the Hungarian driver tried to come around the outside at T1 they made contact collecting Muller who limped back to the pits, while Michelisz stopped in the gravel.

Huff was leading at the front with the top four pulling a gap to the rest of the field chasing Turkington in fifth.

Priaulx then tried to attack Nykjær but in doing so lost a position to Tiago Monteiro. Tarquini was also pushing Huff for the lead. O’Young, leading the Independents in ninth, was also hanging on to the back of Priaulx’s BMW 320si.

Behind him the Independents were racing hard with Sergio Hernández, Stefano D’Aste, Poulsen, Franz Engstler and Mehdi Bennani all jostling for position when Engstler ran wide losing three places.

On lap nine, Priaulx moved ahead of Monteiro before the latter made contact with O’Young and dropped back further. O’Young moved up into eighth and provisional Race 2 pole. Priaulx continued to move forward overtaking rookie Nykjær for sixth and Turkington for fifth on the final lap.

O’Young came under pressure from Poulsen for the Independents’ victory but held off the Dane to also take Race 2 pole position.

Huff completed a lights-to-flag victory scoring his first win of the season for Chevrolet ahead of Tarquini, and team-mate Menu. Farfus held on for fourth ahead of his BMW Team RBM team-mate Priaulx. Turkington was sixth ahead of Nykjær and O’Young making an all rookie front row for the second race of the day.