Photo: WTCC Media

Esteban Guerrieri wins dramatic first race of the WTCC in Morocco

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Campos Racing’s Esteban Guerrieri followed in the footsteps of his countryman José María López by winning the first race of the 2017 season in Marrakech, in a race which saw just ten cars make the finish.

All the drama took place at the start, with a few bad launches at the standing start saw a number of incidents throughout the field, chiefly with RC Lada’s Yann Ehrlacher running into the rear of a slow-starting John Filippi of Sébastien Loeb Racing, causing terminal damage to his Vesta.

Volvo’s Néstor Girolami and Citroën’s Tom Chilton also both had slow getaways and dropped right to the back of the field, while the safety car was out as Ehrlacher’s Lada was recovered to the pits.

Before the race was restarted, there was trouble for Münnich’s Rob Huff, who pulled into the pits to retire with an overheating issue with his Citroën. The field behind him thought the cars were being directed through the pit lane as they had been on the first lap and joined him, which saw two racing packs formed of seven and four cars, with pole-sitter Tom Coronel leading the pack ahead of Guerrieri and Volvo’s Thed Björk.

Coronel would soon struggle with a braking issue, and ran wide at Turn 3 on lap 12, relinquishing his lead to Guerrieri, falling down to seventh.

The Dutchman would lose a further position to the SLR Citroën of Tom Chilton, who moved forward to the lead of the second train of cars, but was a full ten seconds behind the first group at the finish.

Broken suspension for the two Hondas of Ryo Michigami and Zengõ’s Daniel Nagy meant just ten cars would make the finish.

Guerrieri won the race just under as second ahead of Thed Björk, with local hero Mehdi Bennani completing the podium.

Nicky Catsburg finished fourth for Volvo ahead of the two Hondas of Norbert Michelisz and Tiago Monteiro.

Tom Chilton finished eighth ahead of Tom Coronel, with Volvo’s Néstor Girolami and Zengõ Honda driver Aurélien Panis completing the race’s result.

The second race gets underway at 18:00 WEST with Honda’s Tiago Monteiro on pole position ahead of Volvo’s Néstor Girolami.