NEWS ARCHIVE

Alain Menu and Andy Priaulx won one race apiece in Oschersleben yesterday. The Swiss driver gave Chevrolet their first victory on the German track, while the Briton scored his sixth win of the season and moved further ahead in the Drivers’ Championship. In the two latest meetings, Priaulx has recovered 38 points from the leader Yvan Muller, reducing his gap to 11, and now he has also jumped ahead of Gabriele Tarquini (who has scored only 2 points in the three latest races) in second position.

12 drivers were awarded 30-second time penalties for exceeding the maximum speed of 90 kmh allowed during the rolling start of the first race. However, the only change in the race results concerns Coronel (who slips from fourth to sixth) and the pair Monteiro-Priaulx who gain one position moving up to fourth and fifth respectively. In terms of Championship points, this reduced the gap between Muller and Priaulx from 13 to 11.

Alain MENU: “This win has been a long time coming. My season started well in Brazil but Marrakech was a disaster. Today luck went my way with Huff getting a black flag. It was a bit unfortunate for him as there is always a domino effect going into turn one here, but after I got the lead I just drove my Chevrolet to the end and it was perfect, although I had to drive very carefully in the last laps in order to save my tyres.”

Andy Priaulx led Augusto Farfus across the line to take a comfortable 1-2 finish for BMW Team RBM in Oschersleben this afternoon. Priaulx now moved ahead of Gabriele Tarquini to second in the championship just 13-points adrift of leader Yvan Muller who completed the podium. Kristian Poulsen claimed a clear win in the Independents’ Trophy, his second of the day, finishing sixth whilst Michel Nykjær was again the best rookie finishing in a brilliant fourth overall.

Chevrolet’s Alain Menu claimed his first victory of the season, his first since Brands Hatch in 2009, at Oschersleben’s Motorsport Arena today while teammate Rob Huff was black-flagged whilst out in front. Poleman Augusto Farfus finished second ahead of championship leader Yvan Muller, while reigning champion Gabriele Tarquini failed to finish. Poulsen won the Independents’ Trophy and Nykjær took the rookie honours. Michelisz came through from 15th on the grid to finish eighth.

While attending the WTCC event in Oschersleben, BMW Motorsport Director Mario Theissen released the following statement: “We said at the beginning of the year that we will continue offering touring cars in the future. In detail, we announced the development of a 1.6-litre Di turbocharged engine. This will be run in the MINI Countryman WRC from next year and will be available for BMW S2000 race cars as well.

Augusto FARFUS: “Oschersleben is a great circuit I like so much. Conditions were tricky so it was a bit of a lottery. I’m very happy to be on pole here though. It is important to put the car ahead into turn one so this is a big help for the race. We also had the performance in the dry so I think we can perform well in the race. Hopefully I can help bring the title to BMW.”

Augusto Farfus (1:38.070) claimed his second pole position of the season at Oschersleben today, the day after the Brazilian celebrated his 27th birthday. As the rain began to fall in Q2 Farfus put in two clean laps to take pole ahead of Chevrolet’s Rob Huff (1:38.176) and his BMW Team RBM teammate Andy Priaulx (1:38.186). Norbert Michelisz (1:38.634) was the best rookie in fifth, but will start 15th after a 10-position grid penalty imposed following the previous event in Brno.

Championship leader Yvan Muller emerged quickest in a damp second practice at Oschersleben today with his final lap of the 30-minute session, a 1:37.715. The lap times tumbled as the track dried out with Muller’s final lap over 11-seconds quicker than the first recorded time of the practice, Rob Huff’s 1:49.051. Alain Menu (1:37.886) was second quickest ahead of Tiago Monteiro (1:38.122).