First victories for Honda and BMW

The second visit by the WTCC to the Slovakia Ring again attracted a huge crowd, as 38,000 spectators flocked to track over the two days.

They were treated to two close races, and if the first one was a fast procession led by the Honda trio, the second one provided plenty of action and overtaking.

Gabriele Tarquini became the first driver to win a WTCC race for three different manufacturers when his Honda Civic won the first of today’s two races at the Slovakia Ring. His win – also the first for the Castrol Honda WTCC team, and the second for the Japanese manufacturer since
James Thompson won with an Accord at Imola in 2008 – follows his victories for Alfa Romeo and SEAT and formed part of an all-Honda podium; his teammate Tiago Monteiro finished second and Norbert Michelisz was third in a Zengö Motorsport Civic.

Race 2 then saw victory go to the BMW 320 TC of Tom Coronel, who became the fifth driver to win a round of this year’s WTCC. Six of the seven BMW cars competing at the Slovakia Ring were fitted with new carbon fibre doors to reduce weight and it seemed Coronel took full advantage of the change. For a while, it looked as though there would be four different manufacturers represented on today’s two race podiums, but a slight error by the reigning WTCC Champion, Rob Huff, saw his SEAT León run wide on the penultimate lap, allowing the Chevrolet Cruze of Yvan Muller to finish second with Tarquini’s Honda third.

In the Yokohama Trophy there was a win apiece for the two bamboo-engineering drivers. James Nash took maximum points in Race 1 by finishing sixth overall while Alex MacDowall claimed the category win in Race 2 when he finished eighth.

The championship will resume next weekend at Budapest’s Hungaroring for rounds 7 and 8.