Masterful Muller's seventh victory of 2013 with Macau win
Yvan Muller added to his year's lengthy tally of successes by taking home the winner's trophy at Macau following the penultimate race of the 2013 FIA WTCC season, his seventh chequered flag of the year which also saw him set the fastest lap of 2:31.573s on the way.
Despite never having a commanding lead, Muller - who exits RML Chevrolet over the winter - was always in control and on good form as he eased to victory ahead of a battling Tiago Monteiro and previous champion Rob Huff by a little over a second. The Briton took the bronze medal on his last-but-one outing for the German SEAT-supported Munnich Motorsport squad.
All the cars made it through the first corner Lisboa safely, with the obvious exceptions of the non-starters Freddy Barth (whose qualifying damage couldn't be repaired) and Gabriele Tarquini (whose mechanics were not able change an engine in time for race one.)
Tarquini's absence moved the ever-popular Hungarian Norbert Michelisz into fourth place on the grid, which he kept for the duration. Although the Zengo Motorsport driver was never in contention for a podium, the Suzuka race winner found himself scoring highly in the points table with his efforts.
A pair of battling Bamboo Engineering cars were next across the line in fifth and sixth, Alex MacDowall claiming top independent with the wise old head of his team mate James Nash half-a-second behind. That meant Nash was finally crowned as 2013 Yokohama Trophy champion, a first for a British driver and for a Chevrolet-run team in the series.
Marc Basseng found some end-of-season pace in his SEAT and had a lonely run to the line in a credible seventh. Pepe Oriola was initially classified eighth at the line but he was deemed responsible for putting Tom Chilton's car in the wall on lap two and a thirty-second penalty was given out by the stewards after the race had ended which put the Tuenti Chevrolet driver down to 15th
That meant that Stefano D'Aste moved up to P8 after he found a bit of speed to hold off Tom Boardman - another enthusiastic performance by the Brit, ninth for the Special Tuning Racing driver meaning that he grabs some more points in the standings following on from excellent form in Shanghai. Tom Coronel was also involved in the battle, but he had to make do with tenth with fellow BMW driver Mehdi Bennani just behind as the Moroccan missed out on some points by a mere second.
Further back, Henry Ho took the class win for the Eurosport Asia Trophy drivers, with new category champion Yukinori Taniguchi third in class in Michel Nykjaer's vacated NIKA Racing Chevrolet car.
Despite the fact that the Guia circuit is known for its unforgiving nature which means that any driving mistake usually putts the driver out of contention and into the daunting barriers, an impressive 29 cars stayed out of trouble and were classified as finishing the race. Among those who didn't make it were Campos Racing's Hugo Valente, James Thompson in the LADA, as well as Tom Chilton whose race ended at the hands of Oriola early in the proceedings.
by Dexter Fielding
