Mikel Azcona dominates wet first Zhejiang race

Mikel Azcona dominated the first FIA TCR World Tour race of the weekend at the Zhejiang Circuit in China from second on the grid, as title rival Santiago Urrutia had to fight hard for third.

Pole sitter Norbert Michelisz did not get off the line well, with BRC Hyundai team-mate Azcona getting ahead before the first corner.

Michelisz then went wide and onto the grass as he tried to defend from Geely driver Urrutia, instead dropping two further places to fourth behind Ma Qing Hua.

Thed Björk, who started seventh, made his way past Cupra driver Aurélien Comte on lap three.

Michelisz started to work his way back and put hard pressure on Ma in the fight for third, managing to get past at the end of lap seven as the Geely driver went wide.

The Hungarian driver then quickly caught Urrutia and managed to get past as the Uruguayan driver made a similar mistake as Ma heading onto the main straight on lap ten.

Björk had caught a struggling Yann Ehrlacher by lap 15, getting past for fifth as Ehrlacher slowed even further with a puncture.

The French driver pitted and rejoined at the back of the field.

The same lap saw Björk passing Ma for fourth place with Cupra driver Comte close behind.

Azcona won the race by more than six seconds over team-mate Michelisz, as Urrutia crossed the finishing line in third, over ten seconds adrift.

Björk was close behind in fourth, with Ma only just keeping ahead of Comte to finish fifth.

Jean-Karl Vernay had a lonely race to finish seventh, a massive 28 seconds from Azcona, while Lo Sze Ho rounded off the top eight.

Michelisz secured the fastest lap of the race, meaning that he will move one place up on the reversed Race 2 grid to ninth.

Azcona has further extended his points lead to 33 over Urrutia.

The second race of the weekend starts at 09:30 local time/04:30 CET.