Photo: PSP Images

Yvan Muller wins in Porto, Engstler hits recovery truck

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Yvan Muller won his sixth race of the season in the first race at Porto, leading his Chevrolet team-mate Tom Chilton in a lights to flag victory, whilst there was drama late in the race as BMW’s Franz Engstler collided with a recovery vehicle.

The race started in sunny conditions with all 25 cars making the field, with ROAL’s Tom Coronel joining the grid after missing the morning warm up.

At the start, Castrol Honda’s Gabriele Tarquini quickly passed Norbert Michelisz’s Zengõ Motorsport Honda for fourth whilst Pepe Oriola also soon moved up ahead of the Hungarian for fifth.

Further down, Münnich SEAT driver Rob Huff managed to out-drag Lada’s James Thompson for seventh and then at Turn 6, Special Tuning Racing’s Tom Boardman locked up at Turn 6 and slid into the side of Mehdi Bennani’s Proteam BMW, spinning the Moroccan around at the chicane and dropped him to last position.

After this the race settled down but there was disaster for Honda as first Michelisz ran wide at Turn 13 and hit the wall on the second lap and was forced to retire from the race, and then on lap eight an apparent turbo issue similar to that experience by Tiago Monteiro in FP2 yesterday hit fourth placed Gabriele Tarquini, who stopped at Turn 13.

Two laps later as a recovery vehicle circulated the track, a gaggle of cars came across it at Turn 12 unexpectedly, with Fredy Barth spinning his Wiechers-Sport BMW around on the track and Engstler Motorsport’s Franz Engstler, in shades of Pau 2009 when the German collided with the safety car whilst leading, ran into the back of the truck and was forced to pit with major front-end damage,.

The safety car was then dispatched for two laps bunching the field back up, and at the restart there were a few further movements as Tom Coronel was able to force his way past Marc Basseng’s Münnich SEAT for seventh, and Tom Boardman crashed out at Turn 10 whilst defending against Darryl O’Young’s BMW.

Race two is scheduled to get underway at 17:05 WET/18:05 CET, where bamboo-engineering’s James Nash will start from pole position ahead of Marc Basseng’s SEAT.