Porto, Race 1: Menu beats Chevrolet team-mates

Huff chases Muller very closely, but cannot find a gap

Alain Menu pocketed his third victory of the season, while his team-mates Yvan Muller and Rob Huff had a race-long fight over second place.

After setting pole position on Saturday, the Swiss racer took a perfect start and the lead for good; in the following laps he took advantage of the Muller vs Huff duel to build up a gap, which put him in the position to keep a more cautious pace in the final laps.

The three Chevrolet cars left the rest of the field behind. Tiago Monteiro won the fight with his SUNRED fellow driver Gabriele Tarquini and secured fourth place in front of his home crowd.

Tom Coronel and Robert Dahlgren finished in sixth and seventh respectively, while Norbert Michelisz won the Yokohama Trophy from Michel Nykjær and Stefano D’Aste who made a brilliant comeback to the championship.

Key moments
Start – Menu sprints from pole position and takes the lead, from Muller
Lap 1 – Huff and Tarquini have a slight contact at Turn 2, Monteiro takes advantage and overtakes Tarquini for fourth
Lap 1 – Villa and Barth clash at T6, Barth spins and is collected by Dudukalo
Lap 3 – Nykjær overtakes D’Aste for ninth
Lap 4 – Poulsen tries to overtake D’Aste, but makes a mistake and drops back to 12th
Lap 5 – Tarquini tries in vain to steal fourth place from Monteiro
Lap 6 – Poulsen and Villa overtake Engstler, demoting him to 13th
Lap 7 – Villa crashes at T7 and stops on the track
Lap 9 – Huff chases Muller very closely, but cannot find a gap

Withdrawals
F. Barth: race incident; A. Dudukal race incident; Villa: race incident.