Curitiba hosts the opening round

The start of the 2011 FIA World Touring Car Championship is just one week away. The series’ seventh season will get underway once again at Curitiba, Brazil.

This will be the sixth time the 3.7 km circuit has hosted the WTCC and after five years as a stand-alone event, this time the WTCC shares the limelight with the Copa Caixa Stock Car, Brazil’s most popular racing car series.

The World Championship visited Curitiba for the first time in July 2006; a crowd of 34,000 attended the races that were won by Jordi Gené (SEAT León) and Andy Priaulx (BMW 320si).

From 2007 the Brazilian event was moved to March and given the honour of opening the season. BMW Team Germany fellow drivers Jörg Müller and local boy Augusto Farfus shared victories and the attendance was even larger, with 45,000 spectators.

In the latest years (2008, 2009 and 2010) Yvan Muller and Gabriele Tarquini dominated the field, winning Race 1 and Race 2 respectively for three consecutive times. Five of those six victories were for SEAT, while Muller’s won for Chevrolet in 2010.