Photo: WTCC Media

Rob Huff takes first 2010 win, Tarquini closes on lead

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Rob Huff has taken his first win of the year at Brno ahead of Tarquini and Menu, as championship leader Yvan Muller fails to score closing up the championship.

At the start, Huff held on to the lead ahead of Tarquini, as Alain Menu managed to pass Farfus for fourth – with Colin Turkington still third.

Not too far back, chaos ensued as Jordi Gené lost control after slight contact, slowing the pack up behind, which caused Andy Priaulx to run into the back of Tom Coronel, who in turn spun around Kristian Poulsen’s BMW.

The contact caused front end damage to the BMW 320si of Priaulx, but Tom Coronel ended up stuck in the gravel, and Gené was out with broken front suspension.

This meant the safety car had to be deployed to recover the sticken SEAT’s.

On the restart, Colin Turkington was slow to get away from third and was immediately passed by Alain Menu & Augusto Farfus, then Norbert Michelisz turned around the eBay Motors BMW, straight into Yvan Muller who tried to take advantage of the tangle by passing round the outside, but the championship leader ended up with a damaged Cruze after being speared by the BMW and headed back to the pits, whilst Michelisz ended up in the gravel.

Turkington was able to continue with similar front-end damage to that of Andy Priaulx, holding on to fifth ahead of the SUNRED SEAT León TDI of Michel Nykjaer.

There will be a Chevrolet on pole for race two, but it will be the bamboo-engineering Lacetti of Darryl O’Young, the top finishing independent in the race. O’Young managed to move ahead of the SR-Sport León TDI of Tiago Monteiro on lap nine. Monteiro was also passed on the penultimate lap by the BMW of Kristian Poulsen who finished second in the independents’ category.

On the final lap, Priaulx moved ahead of Colin Turkington for fifth, whilst Poulsen came very close to denying pole to Darryl O’Young, fighting with the Hong Kong driver just finishing behind in ninth.

With Gabriele Tarquini finishing second, and Yvan Muller not scoring, Tarquini closes to within 5 points of Muller in the drivers championship.