Alain Menu wins destructive race one in Japan
Alain Menu won the first race of the day at Suzuka after a multi-car collision took out three cars at the start, whilst Huff closes in on Muller in the standings.
Alain Menu started from pole position alongside Yvan Muller, but their were dramas before the first corner as the Volvo of Robert Dahlgren was spun out after contact from Michel Nykjaer’s SUNRED León.
Further on into the first turn, contact between Rob Huff’s Chevrolet and Tom Coronel’s BMW saw the Dutchman slide into Tarquini’s SR León and then spun around with Tiago Monteiro’s SR León caught up in the incident, hitting Javier Villa’s BMW side on causing irreperable damage to Monteiro’s car.
The safety car was called as the carnage was cleaned up whilst Yvan Muller had emerged as the leader, but an agreement between the Chevrolet drivers to not attack each other at the start meant Muller relinquished the position once the race was underway again.
Yvan Muller appeared to be struggling with his Chevrolet Cruze and slide wide on lap ten, dropping behind title rival Rob Huff as well as the SR León of independent driver Michel Nykjaer.
After an incredible repair job by ROAL Motorsport to fix the front suspension on Coronel’s car, the 39-year-old rejoined the race with five laps to go to test the repairs on the BMW 320 TC.
Gabriele Tarquini put on an incredible charge after pitting for new tyres at the end of the first lap after the incident with Coronel & Huff to drive up to ninth place and into the points positions by the end of the race.
Kristian Poulsen was the top placed BMW and scored good points with second in the independents’ class, whilst Yukinori Taniguchi took his best result of the year in his home race with seventh
Menu went on to take his third win of the season with Huff second and Nykjaer taking his best result of the season in third, and also moved up into third place in the Yokohama Independents’ Trophy standings.
Rob Huff pulled back six points on Yvan Muller to reduce the Frenchman’s Championship lead to just ten points heading into the second race.
