Kevin Ceccon wins at Suzuka, Muller leads the Championship

This will certainly annoy Fabrizio Giovanardi. While the double BTCC champion slammed the door of Romeo Ferraris due to a lack of results, Kevin Ceccon scored the first victory of the season for Team Mulsanne in WTCR by winning the first race of the Suzuka meeting (Japan).

The Italian took the advantage over pole sitter Aurélien Compte (Peugeot ) on the second lap and retained control of the race despite two interruptions. The DG Sport Compétition driver failed less than a second behind the winner, while the podium was completed by Yvan Muller (Hyundai) who carried out an operation in the Championship by taking control of the Drivers' classification, finding himself tied with Gabriele Tarquini (Hyundai) only 8th in the race.

The bad operation was for Thed Björk (Hyundai) who found himself 17 points behind the leaders after retiring on the 3rd lap after hitting a wall of tires while battling with Gordon Shedden (Audi). The safety car came out following the exit of Yann Ehrlacher (Honda) at the 130R corner while he was also fighting with the Briton.

Esteban Guerrieri (Honda) and Mehdi Bennani (Volkswagen) completed the Top 5 ahead of Jean-Karl Vernay (Audi). Nathanaël Berthon (Audi) finished 12th ahead of Aurélien Panis (Audi). John Filippi (Cupra) finished 20th.

For his return to competition following his accident last year, Tiago Monteiro (Honda) ranked 15th after starting from 20th position.

The second race will be contested this Sunday at 3:05 a.m. while the last event will take place from 4:30 a.m. (Paris time). The races will be broadcast live on Eurosport 2 (rebroadcast at 18 p.m.) with a summary of the highlights next Tuesday at 22 p.m.