Mehdi Bennani holds off Thed Björk to win the final race of 2016 in Qatar

Mehdi Bennani converted his surprise pole into his second victory of the season for Sébastien Loeb Racing, fighting off the factory Citroën of José María López and then the Volvo of Thed Björk for the win, and moves to fifth in the overall drivers’ championship.

Bennani started from pole position and kept the lead into Turn 1 ahead of López, who had got the jump on Thed Björk’s Volvo into the first turn.

The safety car was soon deployed after the Volvo of Robert Dahlgren was taken out of the race after contact from Sébastien Loeb Racing’s Tom Chilton, while the two Ladas of Hugo Valente and Nicky Catsburg also came together at Turn 5 as Valente ran wide in his repaired Vesta, running Catsburg out and through the gravel trap.

Catsburg subsequently picked up a puncture and was able to continue after a quick trip to the pits, but Valente had to retire with broken suspension.

The race was restarted on lap four, and this time López was having to defend against the Volvo of Thed Björk, which allowed Bennani to pull away into the lead. Honda driver Norbert Michelisz muscled his way past Yvan Muller’s Citroën for fourth, with the Frenchman now under attack from Tiago Monteiro. The two former team-mates battled it out on lap five, but both made minor contact at Turn 5, with Monteiro forced out wide and narrowly missing the tyre stack, dropping a spot to the Lada of Gabriele Tarquini.

On lap six, Björk overtook a struggling López into Turn 1, whose car seemed to be struggling after contact in Race 1 with Monteiro and Valente. The Swede then began to close up on race leader Mehdi Bennani, and was right with the Moroccan throughout the last half of the race and piling on the pressure, but a mistake on the penultimate lap saw Björk drop a second behind and was unable to challenge for his second victory of the season.

Monteiro had managed to get back ahead of Tarquini on lap eight for sixth and had closed back in on Yvan Muller. Michelisz then lost pace during the final laps and fell back towards Muller and Monteiro. The Hungarian was on target to take third in the drivers’ championship from his Portuguese team-mate, but then Monteiro was able to pass Muller for fifth on the final lap, which allowed him back ahead in the standings, finishing just one point ahead of Michelisz.

Bennani held on to take his second win of the season, and his first in a non-reversed grid race in the Sébastien Loeb Racing Citroën C-Elysée, while Thed Björk finished second, 1.2 seconds behind in his Volvo S60, with three-time champion José María López finishing third in his final race in the championship.