The León TDI cars of the Spanish manufacturer won both races: in the first one pole sitter Yvan Muller crossed the line first followed by his team-mate Rickard Rydell, while Gabriele Tarquini – on his 46th birthday – resisted the charge of BMW"s reigning champion Andy Priaulx in the second race.
As a consequence of these results, Muller and Tarquini are in a joint lead with 14 points on top of the Drivers' Championship, while in the Manufacturers' Championship SEAT lead by 7 ahead of BMW.
The drivers of the German brand proved that their 320si cars are equally competitive as the turbo-diesel SEATs. For the whole weekend Priaulx, Jörg Müller, Augusto Farfus and Félix Porteiro made life tough for their fellow SEAT competitors and collected three podium results: Müller third in Race 1 (after Farfus' exclusion for a technical problem), Priaulx and Porteiro second and third in Race 2.
Chevrolet suffered from a nightmare weekend. Lap times proved that the Lacetti cars are extremely competitive, but Alain Menu's dramatic shunt in qualifying – from which the Swiss driver escaped unharmed – sounded like an omen. All three Chevrolet men (Robert Huff, Nicola Larini and Alain Menu) were eliminated in collisions during the first race, and the second race was not much better, as only Larini made to the end out of the points.
In the Independents' Trophy, Olivier Tielemans scored two victories on his first appearance in the Wiechers-Sport BMW. In the first race the young Dutchman benefited from the collision that involved Pierre-Yves Corthals and Sergio Hernández, but in the second one he was able to make the pace and to fight an exciting battle with Alessandro Zanardi.
The FIA WTCC will resume on April 6th at Puebla Amozoc, Mexico, for rounds 3 and 4.
