Photo: FIA Media

SEAT take a clean sweep in awards

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SEAT may have officially left the WTCC for 2010, but they’ve done so with a bang, winning every category in the TouringCarTimes 2009 awards as voted by you.

Gabriele Tarquini, Mehdi Bennani & Tom Coronel won in their categories, with SEAT & SEAT Sport Spain taking the manufacturers and teams categories.

Gabriele Tarquini, who won his first World Touring Car title last season, but has several other career acheivements as well, including the 1994 British Touring Car Championship & 2003 European Touring Car Championship, took 33.9% of the vote, to beat a conglomoration of drivers which made up the ‘other’ category.

Gabriele’s closest competition in terms of a single driver, was team mate Yvan Muller – but the votes were very close between the 2008 champion, on 14.2%, three-time champion Andy Priaulx (13.9%) and Chevrolet front runner Robert Huff (13.7%).

SEAT Sport won both the manufacturers category, with 45% of the vote from BMW (25.9%) – as well as the team’s category with 39.7% from Chevrolet/Ray Mallock Limited (19.8%) to seal their dominance in their final season as a manufacturer entrant.




Mehdi Bennani’s partial season, in which he only competed in four of the 12 rounds of the championship, was so impressive it still earned him the rookie of the year honours in your votes.

In a season where there were very few first timers in full year drives, Bennani took an incredible 58.1% of the vote, with his closest competitor in the category being Tim Coronel, who took 22.6% of the vote despite only competing in one event as a prize drive for the SUNRED SEAT team.

Bennani drove the Exagon Engineering SEAT Leon in 2009, but his strong performances were not only spotted by the fans, but the Wiechers Sport BMW team with whom he will race this season.

The strongest victory however, was reserved for the independent category, with 2009 Yokohama Trophy champion Tom Coronel taking a impressive 61.8% of the vote. Tom has spoken to TouringCarTimes about his delight in receiving this accolade, and is looking forward to the new season with increased motivation, as he now moves into the car driven to the overall championship last year.