Shanghai, Race 1 - Menu beats Turkington

Alain Menu beat Colin Turkington by a small gap at the end of an exciting race. Rob Huff claimed third place ahead of Yvan Muller and reduced his gap from the championship leader to ten points.

Turkington enlivened the whole race, chasing Huff for second place, overtaking him and then putting the pressure on Menu in the latest ten laps. The Irishman gave the Wiechers-Sport team their best result ever in WTCC.

Menu resorted to the whole of his long racing experience to drive back the assaults of the BMW drivers and managed not to make the lesser mistake or open the least of a gap, securing his fifth victory of the season.

Tom Coronel and Kristian Poulsen finished in fifth and sixth after Norbert Michelisz dropped down in the late stages of the race.

Key moments
Start – Menu sprints from the pole to take the lead from Huff, Turkington and Michelisz
Lap 2 – Muller overtakes Tarquini for fifth
Lap 3 – Tarquini drops down behind Coronel, Monteiro and Poulsen
Lap 4 – Huff and Turkington have a clash and the former maintain second position
Lap 5 – Bennani overtakes Tarquini for ninth
Lap 6 – Tarquini pits with brake problems
Lap 8 – Poulsen overtakes Monteiro for seventh
Lap 9 – Bennani overtakes Monteiro for eighth
Lap 10 – Coronel closes in on Muller
Lap 13 – Turkington overtakes Huff and moves up to second
Lap 17 – Michelisz rejects Muller’s assault in Turn 2
Lap 18 – Muller overtakes Michelisz for fourth, the latter loses two further places to Coronel and Poulsen
Lap 20 – Turkington is biting the tail of Menu’s car
Lap 22 – Menu increases his leading gap to half-a-second
Lap 23 – Nykjær and Ng clash and involve Taniguchi
Lap 24 – Taniguchi crashes, a suspension broken after the incident of the previous lap
Lap 25 – Menu wins from Turkington and Huff

Withdrawals
G. Tarquini: brakes; Y. Taniguchi: race incident