TouringCarTimes 2010 Awards: WTCC

In an fascinating WTCC season, with a tough independents battle and some new names on the grid grabbing attention, the readers awards for 2010 have shown some interesting results.

Yvan Muller took his second World Touring Car Championship title, and his first for Chevrolet, and that was enough to earn him your vote as the best driver of 2010. Yvan took 23% of the vote, but it’s who was behind him where it gets interesting.

Your second best driver was one who completed less than half a season; West Surrey Racing driver Colin Turkington, who had won the overall TouringCarTimes award for Best Driver in 2009 (and probably more importantly, the British Touring Car Championship). It was very close however between Turkington and WTCC newcomer Norbert Michelisz, with the Hungarian driver just 0.6% behind in third.

Andy Priaulx was voted into fourth place, with the top SEAT driver Tom Coronel in fifth. Rob Huff and Gabriele Tarquini (the series joint second place finishers) rounded out the top seven.

In the Best Team category, RML/Chevrolet took top honours again with a massive 52% of the vote. In second place was the works BMW squad of RBM, with the independently entered SUNRED/SR-Sport team in third with 11%.

Part time WTCC team West Surrey Racing were a strong fourth with 10% of the public vote, with Bamboo Engineering and Zengo Motorsport next up.

The Best Independent Driver features some strange results. Colin Turkington, who officially was only an independent driver for two and a half race meetings was voted the top indie driver with an astonishing 43% of the vote.

In second place appears to be a slight anomoly, whether there are a lot of Tim Coronel fans on TouringCarTimes or whether he was confused with his twin brother Tom – or maybe his achievement of a double finish at Brands Hatch with Engstler Motorsport in a last minute call were one of the highlights of the season? Anyway, Tim Coronel was voted your second best independent driver with 12% of the vote, with Darryl O’Young behind, then Krisian Poulsen in joint fourth place with the independents’ champion Sergio Hernández.

Back to normality, after a strong first year in the WTCC, former BTCC squad Bamboo Engineering just picked up the top independent team award, beating new team Poulsen Motorsport by just 2%. West Surrey Racing were third ahead of Polestar Racing in a battle of the part-time independents teams, with independent teams’ champions Proteam down in sixth.

Despite featuring strongly in the overall drivers vote, Norbert Michelisz was just pipped for the rookie vote by Hong Kong driver Darryl O’Young, who had gone into the final round with an outside chance of winning the independent drivers title.

Swiss driver Fredy Barth was third, with Harry Vaulkhard fourth after a partial season with Bamboo Engineering.

And finally, the best car of 2010 was voted as the RML built Chevrolet Cruze LT which won the teams and drivers titles in 2010. The vote was still quite mixed, with a lot of support for the SEAT León TDI, picking up a respectable 37% of the vote. The ageing BMW 320si was back in third with just 15%.

Come back tomorrow for the final series in the 2010 awards, the British Touring Car Championship.