Britain’s world champion racing driver, Andy Priaulx, reclaimed the lead of the FIA World Touring Car Championship yesterday by winning the seventh round of the series at Oschersleben, Germany - and the other Briton challenging for the WTCC crown, SEAT’s James Thompson, closed his deficit on the series lead from seven points to just one point.
Both Britons face tough competition, however: with 12 rounds still to go after today’s seventh and eighth races, just two points separate the championship’s top six drivers, and Priaulx (BMW 320si) shares his tenuous lead with former British Touring Car Champion Yvan Muller (SEAT Leon). Priaulx had lost the series’ lead in front of his home crowd at Brands Hatch two weeks ago, skating off the track in torrential rain, but at Oschersleben he bounced back in style by setting fastest qualifying time for pole position, then winning the first race of the day by half-a-second.
Guernsey’s Priaulx was unable to score any points in the day’s second race, but Yvan Muller scored only one point all weekend, by taking eighth place in race two.
Priaulx said: “It’s great that I’m in joint lead of the championship, but it doesn’t mean much at this point in the season because, just like last year, I predict the championship will be decided in the last race.
“Leading as I did in the first race is definitely easier than being in the middle of the pack, but I wouldn’t call it easy. I struggled a little bit this weekend, so I knew that I had to make a break at the beginning of Race One, which I did. I thought that with the reverse grid [for race two] it would be difficult, and unfortunately I missed a gear coming into the chicane, which lost me two places and one point. I am looking forward to the end of the year, because that is when it gets really fun.”
Harrogate’s James Thompson (SEAT Leon) stayed strongly in the title hunt through consistency, scoring fifth and sixth places, after slipping back from third place in race one with power steering failure.
Thompson commented: “The car felt much better in the second race, although Rickard [Rydell, one of his SEAT team-mates] was a little bit quicker than me, so I let him through and just hung onto his tail for the rest of the race. The fact that we’re all so close is actually quite frustrating, because we lost points in Brands Hatch with the power steering problem and it happened again here.”
The WTCC’s next two races are at Curitiba, Brazil, on July 1/2.
