Photo: CTCC

Martin Cao takes Ford’s first win of 2018 in typhoon-shortened Tianma weekend

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Martin Cao has taken his and the Changan Ford FRD Team’s first win of the season at the Tianma circuit in Shanghai, and also launched into the lead of the championship in a weekend reduced to one race due to a typhoon threat.

Cao got the jump on pole-sitter Rodolfo Avila’s SAIC VW333 Racing Lamando at the start in his Ford Focus, while Cao’s Ford team-mate and former champion Andy Yan was able to pass Avila into Turn 1 and put the Fords in first and second.

Straight away however, Yan was having to race defensively against Avila’s Volkswagen, while Cao broke away in the lead.

Avila eventually passed Yan on lap seven and began to close down on race leader Cao, while Adam Morgan, making his first appearance of the season and his first for the BAIC Senova Racing Team, also passed Yan’s Ford Focus with a lunge down the inside on lap nine to take third.

Avila closed up on the tail of Cao’s Ford, but ran out of laps to mount an attack, with Cao winning the race by just seven-tenths of a second ahead of Avila, with Morgan completing the podium.

Yan finished fourth ahead of Wang Rue’s Volkswagen, with Rue making a one-off appearance in place of the injured Zheng Zhen Dong, with Juan Carlos Zhu sixth in his BAIC Senova D50.
Martin Xie was the best-placed of the Dongfeng Kia Team cars in seventh, leading Kia team-mate Leo Yi, with the Ford of Rainey He and the Volkswagen of Cai Yue completing the top ten.

Cao now leads the championship by 6.5 points over Leo Yi, with Dongfeng Kia maintaining their lead in the manufacturers’ championship over Changan Ford, but with the gap reduced to just 24 points heading to the next round at the Ningbo International Speedpark where the CTCC supports the World Touring Car Cup.