Yvan Muller leads Alain Menu in the standings
After winning the first three races of the season, Yvan Muller heads to Marrakech with a 27 point lead in the standings over Chevrolet team-mate Alain Menu, with Tom Coronel breaking into the Chevrolet trio with two podium finishes today.
The Frenchman dominated race one, at one point pulling out an eight second lead on the Lukoil Racing Team SEAT of Gabriele Tarquini, but struggled in race two in the reverse grid race, slipping on fluid on the track on lap ten, dropping one spot to Pepe Oriola and finishing in eighth spot.
“Fortunately I have the best car on the track, all the team do a perfect job. The Chevrolet team is probably one of the best team’s I’ve ever driven with, and today we can show the fact the car is just fantastic,” said Muller after the first race.
“(Valencia) is probably one of the harder tracks of the season, the temperature is quite high and the fact we have the 50 kilos in the car, I was worried after five or six laps, because this morning after five laps on the warm up I was nowhere, so I was very concerned about it.”
“When I saw the fighting behind I thought now is the point to (create) a gap and try to keep that gap, and for sure they were fighting at the back and the more I could save my tyres.”
Race two winner Alain Menu battled past Engstler and D’Aste and fended off Tom Coronel in the closing stages to win the second race and leap up to second in the Championship standings, 27 points adrift of Muller.
“Behind Stefano I did not want to push too hard too soon for the tyres so I thought okay I’d take my time,” said Menu to TouringCarTimes. “Then I thought I could have a go into Turn 8, that was a little bit optimistic, he closed the door a little late and we touched and I didn’t think it would have been fair to take the lead at that point so I backed off on the exit.”
Menu then repassed D’Aste for the lead into Turn 2 and began to build a gap before coming across the same fluid on the track which would soon see Yvan Muller slide off, and losing some time to Coronel now behind in second.
“Then the last two laps I was too cautious, I backed right off and I had started to have understeer, but I backed off too much and that allowed Tom (Coronel) to close right up and it was very close at the end, but I wanted to win so I took a good chance to close the door out of Turn 6, but it was close. To get out of that spin, some of it was talent some of it was luck and at one point I could see the Armco facing me and I thought ‘not again'”.
Last year after two races Menu was second in the standings, then behind Rob Huff and finds himself in a similar position again as the WTCC heads to Marrakech.
“It’s too early to think about the Championship really, I take every weekend as it comes, I’ve always said if it’s your year you win the Championship, but against Yvan it’ll be tough but it’s not just Yvan. We’ll see after ten races.”
FIA World Touring Car Championship Standings
