Mehdi Bennani rejoices his “best weekend” in the WTCC

Proteam Racing’s Mehdi Bennani celebrated his best weekend in the WTCC to date with two wins in the Yokohama Trophy as well as second place overall in race two, crossing the line right behind reigning champion Rob Huff.

The Moroccan qualified in ninth position and pushed his way forward in race one to finish at the best placed of all of the BMW drivers in fifth, capitalising on a late race mistake by ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel.

In the second race, Bennani launched into the lead from second on the grid, taking advantage of the rear-wheel drive BMW on the standing start, but with the safety car out after one lap, the Moroccan was unable to defend his lead against the SEAT León of Rob Huff at the restart, and though he kept with Huff throughout the race, had to settle for second.

“Two independent victories and second overall in the second race is unbelievable, it’s like a dream, I’m still waiting for somebody to tell me to wake up you have to go to the race,” said Bennani to TouringCarTimes. “It’s fantastic, it’s my belt result even in the World Championship, I hope it opens the door for more good results, but we know the circuits where there are a lot of straights like Austria are coming where we’ll lose a lot of speed to the SEAT, Chevrolet and Hondas.

“In the first race we had a big fight between Huff, Coronel and myself, but I wanted to be very safe as I knew I was in a good starting position for race two.

“In race two when I saw the safety car and the engineer told me about the safety car I thought ‘oh no’, as I knew the SEAT after the safety car would catch me on the straight.”

Having scored just three points prior to Hungary, Bennani now leaps up to 12th in the standings with 31 points, passing Münnich Motorsport’s Marc Basseng and Engstler Motorsport’s Franz Engstler. In the Yokohama Trophy, the 29-year-old moves up three positions to fourth overall behind the three leading Chevrolets of James Nash, Alex MacDowall and Michel Nykjaer.