WTCC KICKS IT INTO ROUND 2

This is the second of the early season ‘fly-away’ events before the WTCC circus makes an eight-stop tour across Europe over the next six months.

SEAT drivers who conquered the opening race of the WTCC are favorites again to win this race, and the León TDI can make the most of its potential on this track located at more than 2,000 metres above sea-level.

With Yvan Muller (above) and Gabriele Tarquini (right) leading the drivers’ and manufacturers’ titles, SEAT Sport’s main goal is to continue racking up points in order to consolidate their position before the beginning of the European stage of the championship, and make it to the Spanish race in Valencia at the head of both qualifications.

The contenders began the championship on equal footing and the two victories obtained by SEAT in Curitiba were the result of the team’s magnificent performance rather than the superiority of their cars, as an analysis of the figures recorded in Curitiba reveals.

Despite the favourable result in Brazil, the SEAT Sport drivers are wary of their advantageous start. As Yvan Muller commented, “after only one race it’s difficult to say that any team is the favourite to win the championship. We have exactly the same chances as BMW.”

The same opinion is shared by Gabriele Tarquini, “SEAT won in Brazil but we didn’t dominate the race. The BMW was the fastest car. What we did better than the rest was to exploit our car’s performance in both the qualifying round as in the race.”

Handicap weights will be applied in Mexico, but this will not affect Jordi Gené, who said: “In Mexico I hope to make up the points I didn’t get in Brazil by taking advantage of the fact that I’ll be carrying less weight than my team-mates. However, the first challenge will be to demonstrate the potential of the TDI in Puebla, where it will be racing for the first time.”

Ex-F1 driver Tiago Monteiro (left, #18) added, “Puebla is completely new for me. That’s the first drawback, and I don’t know what to expect of that race. We made good speed in Brazil, and the only good thing about not scoring in Curitiba, if it can be called that, is that I’ll be starting off in Mexico with very little weight”.

Two races into the 2008 WTCC campaign, BMW's Jörg Müller lies in third place in the drivers' championship on 13 points. The BMW Team Germany driver is hoping for more successful performances in the fight for the title - although there is no patented recipe for success in the WTCC.

"The key to the title will be consistently picking up points", says Müller, who finished third and fourth at the two World Championship races in Curitiba. Despite this successful start to the season, and his many past achievements, the 38-year-old does not have a silver bullet to success.

"There is no real recipe for success", says Müller. "Last year I had accidents when I drove more aggressively – and I also suffered accidents when I held back and was torpedoed from behind. Every race situation is different, and you need luck to get through the melee at the start in one piece."

Chevrolet's Nicola Larini, Rob Huff and Alain Menu look to do everything they can to mark their first points of the 2008 season.

The extensive testing programme, which saw the team running in Spain two weeks ago, has made sure that Chevrolet’s trio have the best equipment possible at their disposal and all three drivers are keen to win the non-turbo battle and chalk up their first points of the season.

In the WTCC's opening race in Curtiba, Brazil, SEAT León TDI cars won both races: in the first one pole sitter Yvan Muller (left) 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 (above left), Jörg Müller (above right), 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 (above right) made to the end out of the points.

In the Independents' Trophy, Olivier Tielemans (left) 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.

[View Results & Standings]