SEAT's Jordi Gene denied Augusto Farfus victory in front of his home fans with his first win of the year in round nine of the World Touring Car Championship at Curitiba in Brazil.
Although the Spaniard has proved one of the front runners through the weekend, Gene's win certainly came as a surprise after Curitiba local Augusto Farfus Jr. had claimed a comfortable pole position and was seemingly in control of the race from the start.
Nonetheless, Gene had bided his time, catching Farfus midway through the race and completing a fair, if robust, manoeuvre on the Alfa Romeo.
The Spaniard then went on to claim a dominant win over his team-mate Peter Terting, who duly took advantage of Farfus being wrong footed by Gene to slip through and secure his second podium finish of the year. A clearly disappointed Farfus rounded out the top three.
From the start, Farfus led the way, slipping into the tight right-left-right kink as others jostled behind him. Remarkably none of the leading drivers fell victim but further back Maurizio Ceresoli was already parked up against the pit wall, while local driver Lucas Molo found himself perched on the racing line at turn one when his TekProm Alfa Romeo broke down.
As a result, the safety car was deployed but not after Alain Menu had a sliding moment in one of Curitiba's banked corners, catching the following Rob Huff and Dirk Muller unawares and causing them both to take avoiding action on the grass and down to the back of the field.
At the restart, Gianni Morbidelli used his lighter Alfa Romeo to out-drag Andy Priaulx's
BMW down into the first corner to slip into seventh place, while Peter Terting also managed to find his way past Gabriele Tarquini on the second lap having lost his third on the grid at the start.
With a clear track in front, Farfus set about extending his lead over Gene and having moved almost two seconds ahead after a handful of laps, it seemed the Brazilian was well on the way to making it a perfect lights-to-flag weekend.
