Unsurprisingly, the safety car was deployed to bunch up the field, revealing Thompson as the leader from pole position, ahead of Nicola Larini, who made the most of the bustle to jump from sixth to second by the end of the first lap.
Yvan Muller had slipped to third ahead of SEAT team-mate Jordi Gene, while Andy Priaulx, Michel Jourdain, Stefano D'Aste – up from 21st on the grid – and Pierre-Yves Corthals rounded out the early provisional point scorers.
The melee of the first corner meanwhile had also caught championship leader Augusto Farfus out, the Brazilian attempting to sneak past Jourdain, only for the Mexican to clip the
BMW when he got out of shape on the kerbs exiting turn three. Tipping him into a spin, Farfus tumbled down the order, where he was joined Alain Menu, another driver forced to the back of the field by the turn one pile-up.
From here the race began to settle down, Thompson making the most of Larini's somewhat lacklustre initial pace to pump out a two second lead early on and allowing most of the battles to rage behind him.
Even so, despite the close attentions between Larini, Muller, Gene and Priaulx in disputing second to fifth, it never seemed as though they were likely to make a concerted bid to improve their positions as they searched for much needed consistent points.
Instead, the spectators took their attention to the latter half of the top eight, with D'Aste initially holding steady in his Wiechers-Sport BMW before eventually falling into the clutches of quicker opposition behind.
That opposition came in the shape of Luca Rangoni, the Italian once again ignoring his ‘independent' status to battle with the works BMWs. Indeed, despite considerable success ballast, the Proteam car moved up to seventh by lap six and although he took Jorg Muller with him, the German recovering from a disappointing qualifying position, he never looked like succeeding that position.
![James Thompson - N.Technology Alfa Romeo 156 [Pic credit: FIA WTCC]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/323711.jpg)
