The Portuguese track of Porto has been the venue of two eventful races at the seventh meeting of the World Touring Car Championship, which nonetheless ended-up with a new success for SEAT. With a victory of Gabriele Tarquini in the first race, two podium finishes of Yvan Muller, another podium finish of Rickard Rydell and the points scored by Jordi Gene and Tiago Monteiro, SEAT and their drivers are still leading both world championship standings.
The team remains faithful to its principles and the teamwork of drivers and engineers has borne the expected fruit. The Portuguese round raised an additional difficulty, since SEAT Sport had never raced in Porto with the León TDI before. The work done during the free practices in order to find the right settings was especially valuable and the performance of the drivers kept on improving during the weekend. The team managed to win again and the points scored are extremely valuable on a track that has proven to be absolutely unforgiving.
Two accidents in the first lap forced the race direction to stop the first race of the day to clear off the track. After the pause, Gabriele Tarquini took over the lead resisting the initial attacks of Robert Huff. The British driver gave up after a few laps, since Yvan Muller was attacking him in search of the second position. Given the inherent difficulties of an urban track, Muller decided to keep his valuable third position instead of setting-off for a risky manoeuvre. In the group of followers, Monteiro finished in an excellent fourth place in front of his home crowd, with Jordi Gene and Rickard Rydell in sixth and seventh position.
In the second race Rickard Rydell, Jordi Gene and Tiago Monteiro placed themselves behind the leader Farfus, waiting for the arrival of Muller and Tarqini who were starting from further in the back. The Frenchman was able to overtake the Chevrolets of Larini and Menu and place himself behind his teammates, while Tarquini was eliminated while trying to pass his rivals.
Yvan Muller moved up to second, with Rydell completing the podium, followed by Gene and Monteiro, achieving an extremely profitable result for the overall standings which is still lead by Muller, with an advantage of fifteen points over Farfus who is third, one point behind Tarquini. In the overall manufacturers’ standings SEAT is still ahead of BMW.
The next round of the Touring Car World Championship will be staged on the British racetrack of Brands Hatch on 18th and 19th July.
Results
Race 1:
1. G.Tarquini (SEAT León TDI)
2. R.Huff (Chevrolet), + 2’934
3. Y.Muller (SEAT León TDI), +7’848
4. T.Monteiro (SEAT León TDI), + 8’472
5. N.Larini (Chevrolet), + 15’790
6. J.Gene (SEAT León TDI), +16’192
7. R.Rydell (SEAT León TDI), + 16’640
8. A.Farfus (BMW), + 16’975
13. T.Coronel (SEAT León WTCC), + 33’010.
Race 2:
1. A.Farfus (BMW)
2. Y.Muller (SEAT León TDI), +2’295
3. R.Rydell (SEAT León TDI), +2’818
4. J.Gene (SEAT León TDI), + 3’385
5. T.Monteiro (SEAT León TDI), + 3’970
6. R.Huff (Chevrolet) + 4’219
7. A. Priaulx (BMW) + 4’583
8. J.Müller (BMW) + 5’064
12. T.Coronel (SEAT León WTCC) + 13’290
Driver´s standings:
1. Y.Muller, 80.
2. G.Tarquini, 66.
3. A.Farfus, 65.
4. R.Rydell, 46.
5. R.Huff, 43.
6. J.Muller, 42.
7. A.Priaulx, 38.
8. J.Gene, 32.
9. T.Monteiro, 31.
10. S.Hernández, 29.
Manufacturer´s standings:
1. SEAT, 191
2. BMW, 174
3. Chevrolet, 121
4. Lada, 53
- SEAT Sport
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