» WTCC Portugal: Huff wins dramatic Race 2

World Touring Car Championship points leader Robert Huff has snatched a sensational win in the second race around the streets of Porto after barging past team-mate Yvan Muller to take the lead.

Muller had taken the lead from Race 2 pole-sitter Stefano D’Aste on the third lap, but Huff quickly set about passing the BMW driver before closing down a 2.5-second gap in a handful of laps to be right on the tail of his French team-mate.

After a processional first race, this one seemed to make up for it in spades when fans were thrilled with the prospect of Huff trying to find a way by Muller. The Briton settled the matter with a bold lunge past Muller at one of the circuit’s umpteen chicanes. The pair touched heavily, and Huff was forced over the chicane run-off, skipping into the lead to take his sixth win of the season.

A frustrated Muller was left to finish in second place, while Tiago Monteiro delighted his home crowd by completing the podium places, consolidating the fourth-placed finish he earned in the first race.

The Portuguese driver was handed the place when D’Aste – making his return to the championship with Wiechers-Sport as a replacement for the sacked Urs Sonderegger – was slapped with a drive-through penalty for starting outside is his grid slot.

The drama wasn’t over for the Italian, who was hit from behind and sent through the bollards by Proteam BMW driver Mehdi Bennani, who holds a reputation for this style of driving. The stewards didn’t fall for that one, and Bennani was hit with a 30-second post-race penalty, while D’Aste was classified eleventh and out of the points. What could have been a fairytale BMW win went up in smoke once again…

Aside from the action up at the front, the rest of the race was fairly tame, with Norbert Michelisz claiming fourth and back-to-back wins in the Independents’ Trophy race, holding out Tom Coronel by 0.3 seconds at the chequered flag.

Alain Menu finished sixth, acknowledging that it was about the best he could have hoped for given his eighth-placed starting position was unlikely to yield him many overtaking opportunities on this narrows circuit.

The rest of the points’ places were completed by Gabriele Tarquini, Franz Engstler, Darryl O’Young and Fredy Barth.

Robert Dahlgren finished well down the order after bogging down off the line; the rest of the field was lucky not to collect his slowly-starting Volvo as the pack sprinted for the first corner.

Huff leads the Drivers’ Championship standings by 29 points over team-mate Muller, while Menu lies in third, 40 points adrift of Huff. After a zero-point round for Kristian Poulsen and back-to-back Trophy wins, Michelisz now heads the Independent Trophy standings by five points.

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2011 FIA WTCC Race of Portugal Final Classification (Race 2 – 11 laps):

	Driver	Team	Result
1.	Robert Huff	RML Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T	23:24.533
2.	Yvan Muller	RML Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T	+ 1.797
3.	Tiago Monteiro	SUNRED SR León 1.6T	+ 8.728
4.	Norbert Michelisz	Zengõ-Dension Team BMW 320TC	+ 9.752
5.	Tom Coronel	ROAL Motorsport BMW 320TC	+ 10.059
6.	Alain Menu	RML Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T	+ 11.114
7.	Gabriele Tarquini	Lukoil-SUNRED SR León 1.6T	+ 12.849
8.	Franz Engstler	Liqui Moly Team Engstler BMW 320TC	+ 19.477
9.	Darryl O’Young	Bamboo Engineering Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T	+ 24.147
10.	Fredy Barth	Swiss Racing SR León 1.6T	+ 25.787
11.	Stefano D’Aste	Wiechers-Sport BMW 320TC	+ 30.250
12.	Michel Nykjær	SUNRED SR León 1.6T	+ 34.399
13.	Aleksei Dudukalo	Lukoil-SUNRED SEAT León 2.0 TDI	+ 37.373
14.	Pepe Oriola	SUNRED SR León 1.6T	+ 37.950
15.	Yukinori Taniguchi	Bamboo Engineering Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T	+ 38.735
16.	Robert Dahlgren	Polestar Volvo C30 1.6T ‘Drive’	+ 39.365
17.	Javier Villa García	Scuderia Proteam BMW 320TC	+ 41.084
18.	Mehdi Bennani*	Scuderia Proteam BMW 320TC	+ 58.161
19.	Kristian Poulsen	Liqui Moly Team Engstler BMW 320TC	+ 1:53.447

	FASTEST LAP
	Robert Huff	RML Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T	2:05.846