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Reigning champions Yvan Muller and SEAT Sport began the new season in the best way as they dominated the race. Muller led from lights to flag, followed by a trio of team-mates: Jordi Gené, Rickard Rydell and Gabriele Tarquini who finished in the order.
Nicola Larini crossed the line fifth and scored the first points for the new Chevrolet Cruze, while Augusto Farfus and Sergio Hernández were the best of the BMW men. They were classified sixth and seventh, ahead of Tiago Monteiro who claimed pole position for Race 2.
Félix Porteiro won the Independents’ class after resisting pressure from Tom Coronel in the early stages.
The race was disrupted by the safety car from lap 6 to 9, after Stefano D’Aste crashed at the Esse de Alta

Man of the race
On his first race with the BMW Team Italy-Spain, Sergio Hernández showed his stuff. Eleventh after the qualifying he managed to escape the lap-one pile up and climbed to eighth.
He had a hard fight with Nicola Larini over the seventh place and briefly managed to jump ahead of the Chevrolet. After the safety car period he chased Augusto Farfus and finished seventh immediately behind him.

Key moment
After the start the field survived the first corner, but a pile up at turn four eliminated three of the major contenders: Jörg Müller, Andy Priaulx and Alain Menu. Müller swerved to the left, hit Priaulx and spun collecting Menu.
The latter retired, while Müller pitted for repairs and rejoined five laps later. As for Priaulx he rejoined immediately and recovered from 21^st to 9^th.

Withdrawals
A. Menu: race incident; S. D’Aste: race incident; R. Huff: throttle cable; K. Poulsen: race incident; M. Čolak: race incident.