Yvan Muller wins in incident packed race one

Yvan Muller won the first race of the day at Donington Park from pole position, but all eyes were behind the Chevrolet trio as the battles raged for the remaining points positions.

At the start, Muller held on to the lead position, whilst Alain Menu tried to follow the Frenchman from third down the inside through Redgate to pass Rob Huff. Huff held on to second place however, with Rob Huff chasing Muller for the race. Although the two ran close for the whole race, he was unable to pass the reigning World Champion.

Gabriele Tarquini made a rocket start from 11th on the grid, and was battling his team-mate Tiago Monteiro for fourth place. The Italian moved ahead, whilst Monteiro pitted with a steering problem. Tarquini briefly held pace with the Chevrolets, fighting with Alain Menu but fell back behind the ROAL Motorsport BMW of Tom Coronel on lap four.

Colin Turkington wasn’t able to make the most of his fifth place on the grid, with his Wiechers-Sport BMW tapped wide through the Old Haipin. Turkington rejoined in tenth.

Robert Dahlgren was on a charge in the Volvo from the final row, and was up to 10th by the end of the first lap. The Swedish driver passed Turkington for ninth on lap three and set about trying to pass Kristian Poulsen in the Liqui-Moly Team Engstler BMW.

After a three lap tussle, the Volvo braked too late running into the back of the BMW, mounting the car and dropping heavily back onto the track and slid back to 13th place, but amazingly was able to continue.

Norbert Michelisz then spun at the Old Hairpin whilst executing an ambitious overtaking manouvre, pitting the following lap.

On lap seven, Dahlgren was up to 12th passing the SR León of Fredy Barth, and then passed Darryl O’Young on the same lap after the Bamboo Chevrolet driver made a mistake at the Old Hairpin running wide.

Turkington also dropped down the order after having passed Poulsen and was attacking Michel Nykjaer. Turkington was caught out with Nykjaer braking earlier than he expected, locking up and going wide at McLean’s. Turkington dropped to 16th but eventually recovered to tenth place.

Dahlgren managed to catch Kristian Poulsen again on the final lap, claiming 8th place on at the line.

With Yvan Muller winning the race, he closed to 22 points off of Rob Huff in the World Drivers Championship, with Franz Engstler picking up the independents’ class win with sixth.

The second race of the day takes place at 14:00.