Matteo Poloni wins eventful first TCR Italy race at Monza

Matteo Poloni won an eventful first TCR Italy race at Monza, beating fellow Audi drivers Pietro Alessi and Nicolas Taylor.

Aikoa Racing driver Nicola Baldan started from pole and headed the field into the first corner ahead of Alessi and a fast starting Taylor who was up from fifth to third on the first lap.

Alessi challenged Baldan for the lead heading into Turn 1 on the second lap, with the two making contact which saw Alessi cutting the first chicane to claim the lead.

But disaster struck Baldan a couple of laps later as he suddenly slowed down while in second place, with Gear Works driver Poloni passing both him and Taylor for second place.

Baldan dropped down to finish seventh.

The start of the next lap saw leading driver Alessi making a mistake while braking for Turn 1, forcing him to take the escape route and losing the lead to Poloni.

A fight for seventh place between Sandro Pelatti (Audi) and Michal Bartoszuk (Honda) resulted in contact and a spin for Pelati at Turn 1 with 14 minutes left of the race.

Pelatti was left stranded on the track which triggered the safety car while the stewards handed Bartoszuk a ten-second penalty for the incident, dropping him down to 13th place. Pelatti was eventually able to rejoin the field a lap down to finish 17th.

The safety car headed back in after one lap and Poloni was able to maintain his lead to win the race by 1.2 seconds over Alessi, as championship leader Taylor completed the podium.

Cimenes was the top non-Audi driver in fourth place for Honda team MM Motorsport while Francesco Cardone finished fifth ahead of Filippo Maria Zanin.

Taylor heads the standings on 203 points, Baldan is second on 192 points and Alessi is third on 173 points.

The second and final race of the weekend at Monza starts at 13:35 CEST on Sunday.