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WTCC Monza analysis

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The World Touring Car Championship of 2006 is here. The two races were as expected very thrilling and hard. Alfa Romeo, BMW and SEAT fought for the honours. Yvan Müller turned out to be the most succesful driver despite not winning a race.

– The first race was good but the second race was amazing. In each of the nine laps something was happening, it was incredibly tough. I was just focused on finishing it because the opening event of the season is always tense and I wanted to score as many points as possible, Yvan said after the race.

Before the race none of the SEAT drivers had any higher hope of scoring many points. Monza is known to promote cars with strong engines, and SEAT estimates themselves to be behind both BMW and Alfa. But the results spoke otherwise that weekend.

– The car was perfect but I got my result with a bit of luck. To win a championship you always have be within the top five and then at the end of the season you won’t be far from the top place, Yvan continued.

Current champion Andy Priaulx won the first race, but retired from the second race after a crash with his team mate Dirk Müller. Priaulx is trailing Yvan with five points in the championship and was very disapointed after the crash.

– My collision with Dirk is easily said: I went up on the inside which was the racing line. We got bunched up so I went wide and stayed on the racing line on the exit. I was just driving forward and the next thing I know I got a massive hit on the rear left which turned me round and we ran out of road and went straight into the barriers, Priaulx said after the race.

The best team at Monza was for sure SEAT. The team came with low expectations. All of the SEAT drivers managed to stay relatively free from trouble, especially Yvan Müller, in both races. That was for sure not the case of the BMW drivers in race two. As stated in the race report – best BMW driver in race two was a privately owned BMW 320i in eleventh place. Even Chevrolet scored more points despite their dreadful qualifying.

Augusto Farfus held the flag high for Alfa Romeo, putting him second in the drivers championship and Alfa Romeo in second in the manufacturers championship. Despite lacking full manufacturer support this year Farfus showed that they are still contenders for the championship. Chevrolet is still a bit behind the “big three”, but Menu showed that it doesen’t take much for them to take a podium finish.

Drivers Championship

1 Yvan Müller 16 pts
2 Augusto Farfus 11 pts
3 Andy Priaulx 10 pts
4 Gabriele Tarquini 7 pts
5 James Thompson 6 pts
5 Alain Menu 6 pts

Manufacturers Championship

1 SEAT 26 pts
2 Alfa Romeo 22 pts
3 BMW 18 pts
4 Chevrolet 12 pts

The situation for Magny-Cours in about three weeks will be very interestning. The French track isn’t demanding strong engines as Monza is. This should work in favour for the SEAT’s. BMW had a small advantage at Monza, which was eliminated by mistakes. Last year at Magny-Cours BMW took a 1-2 in race one and a 1-2-3-4 in race two. But SEAT has regained much ground on BMW compared to last year.

Prialx, J.Müller and D.Müller are going to have a hard match against the SEAT-mafia during all season. The weight penalty system will even things out, but as SEAT have Tarquini, Y.Müller, Rydell and Thompson, there will be someone from SEAT at the top despite this. Gené and Terting are there as well, but did not convince anyone with their performance at Monza.

The championship is as tough as ever, a fact that privateer Jens Edman described well after the race.

– It was cars all over the place trying to get through. In WTCC all drive extremely tough, it’s on life and death. And if you give any one anything, they’re there immideately trying to pass, Edman said.

Edman is running a Peugeot 407 for Peugeot Denmark in a couple of selected WTCC races this season to prepare for the Danish championship. Edman crashed hard with Roberto Colciago in the first race which forced them both out from the rest of the weekend.

– Coming in to curva grande I had the inside line with a BMW on the out side. I felt that he started to push harder against my side of the car and finally he turned me around. I was left standing across the track and then came Colciago in full speed and hit my car right in the side. It was not Colciago’s fault, he had no chance avoiding my car, Edman said after the race.

Expect Jörg and Dirk Müller to be on edge at Magny-Cours trying to make up for the dreadful Monza results. Priaulx will as usual be up in front. Yvan Müller is carrying extra weight after his two second places and could have trouble maintaining behing SEAT-driver number one. The result is hard to predict, but not the fact that we will see a hard race for positions.