Fabio Fabiani wraps up Jay-Ten Trophy

Fabio Fabiani has now finally moved into first place in the Jay-Ten Trophy for cars conforming to the 2010 FIA Super 2000 regulations at Shanghai, to take the lead of the category of which he has been for the most part the only representative all season.

The latest WTCC trophy was open to all competitors that are firstly eligible for the Yokohama Independents’ Trophy and also competing in cars without the latest specification 1.6 litre turbocharged engine.

At the first round of the World Touring Car Championship at Curitiba in March, there were seven competitors in this class, with Bamboo Engineering entering their Chevrolet Lacettis whilst they waited for RML to complete their new Cruze 1.6Ts. SUNRED also started the year with the SEAT León 2.0 TDI for all six of their drivers (though Tiago Monteiro and Gabriele Tarquini were not eligible for the trophy).

The only normally aspirated BMW 320si entered was that of Fabio Fabiani for the full season by Proteam, whilst the Italian team upgraded their other two BMWs to the new 1.6T engine for Javier Villa and Mehdi Bennani.

Bamboo dropped out of contention in Jay-Ten, switching to the turbo Cruze for Round 2 at Zolder, whilst SUNRED slowly introduced their new 1.6 turbo from Round 4 at Hungary, finally upgrading Aleksei Dudukalo at Donington Park, but before then the Russian was able to notch up five wins in the class and establish a clear lead with the turbo-diesel SEAT.

Fabiani sat out Brno and Porto, was excluded from Donington Park with a fuel irregularity, was beaten by the race-by-race entry of Ibrahim Okyay in Germany, before failing to qualify in Japan which meant the Italian looked set to miss out on the title. A last minute switch to Engstler in their spare BMW 320si for Shanghai saw the 37-year-old take the two class wins this weekend ahead of Philip Ma, whom had taken over his seat at Proteam, and moved into a 13 point lead over Dudukalo, but the SUNRED driver is no longer eligible for the trophy which means Fabiani now cannot be passed in the standings.

Jay-Ten Trophy Standings after Shanghai