Damage limitation weekend for Yvan Muller in Morocco

Citroën’s Yvan Muller finished fifth and took victory from the reversed grid race in Marrakech, in a weekend in which he had to take a five-place grid penalty following an incident with Sébastien Loeb Racing driver Mehdi Bennani last month in Argentina.

The four-time champion moved up to third in the points standings after not scoring in the second race at Termas de Río Hondo, but is still 36 points behind points leader José María López after two race meetings.

In race two, Muller had strategically set the reversed grid pole in qualifying, but didn’t have an easy race, having to fight off team-mate Sébastien Loeb for all 14 laps of the race.

“It was a big battle. You could see Seb was very close behind me and I was pushing as much as I could, and he was pushing as hard as he could,” said Muller.

In the first race, Muller went from tenth to fifth, only being held up for a number of laps behind the Honda of Tiago Monteiro, which delayed him enough so he couldn’t fight the other four Citroëns ahead of him.

“It was good, and I did a good start, the first corner I was a bit cautious, I was thinking of the second race so to start P10 and finish P5 without contact is a good result.”

“It’s important to score some points after the Argentina race, but now we have to go even further.”