Huff leads Chevy 1-2-3 as Coronel crashes out

Rob Huff lead a 1-2-3 for Chevrolet in race one at Zolder, whilst their was chaos on lap three, with Coronel, Benanni, Engstler, Barth & Lee all out of the race.

Rob Huff made the perfect get away from pole position, whilst Gabriele Tarquini was able to sneak ahead of the second placed Chevrolet of Alain Menu for one corn er, before the Swiss-driver took the position back out of T2.

Tom Coronel had made a great start in the ROAL Motorsport BMW 320 TC, up to seventh at the end of the first lap, but slipped back to ninth after an error, and then was caught out by a spinning Fredy Barth on lap three. Coronel took avoiding action, going wide around the corner, but lost control of his rear-wheel drive BMW and spun around, clipping the passing BMW of Franz Engstler causing massive front-end damage to Coronel’s BMW, which will miss race two.

On the same lap, Aleksei Dudukalo in the Lukoil-SUNRED SEAT and Yukinori Taniguchi’s Chevrolet Cruze were racing hard, with the SEAT getting a nose down the inside of the Japanese driver, knocking him into a half spin. Marchy Lee collected the Bamboo Chevrolet in the right side, which put Lee out of the race, whilst Taniguchi continued on to finish in 14th.

After five laps behind the safety car, the race restarted, with Yvan Muller soon passing Tarquini for third, whilst the remaining Engstler Motorsport BMW of Kristian Poulsen managed to retake the independents’ lead from Norbert Michelisz after a door-to-door battle on lap 11.

There was one change on the final lap, as Javier Villa managed to get past Darryl O’Young on the start/finish line on the last lap for ninth place. Michel Nykjaer had also made good progress from the back, the Danish driver finishing in eighth place and top of the Jay-Ten class competitors.