As a replacement venue for the cancelled Moroccan round, Budapest Hungaroring in Hungary hosted a FIA World Touring Car Championship event for the first time in its history. Hungaroring is well known as the first ever Formula One venue in Eastern Europe and the track has a lot of low speed corners and undulations.

Throughout the test session on Friday - as customary for a first-time venue - and two practice sessions on Saturday, the recent trend of Chevrolet's dominance continued.

However, the fastest driver in the first session of qualifying was a YOKOHAMA Trophy contender in a BMW, Javier Villa. Another surprise in the session was Robert Dahlgren who set the second fastest time with his Volvo C30. This is the first time for the Swedish manufacturer to go to Q2. Dahlgren was in second in Free Practice 2 just a 0.138 second shy of the Yvan Muller's best lap time in the session and the speed of his Volvo certainly drew much attention this weekend.

From the Chevrolet camp, Muller and Alan Menu duly went on to Q2 but the championship leader, Robert Huff, ended the qualifying session in lowly 12th.

But the aforementioned trend came back in Q2 in which the top ten qualifiers fought again and the Chevrolets were faster than the others. Eventually, Menu secured the eighth pole position in his WTCC carrier and Muller followed in second to complete the all Chevrolet front row.

Dahlgren was on the top of time sheet for the warm up session on Sunday morning, ahead of two Chevrolets of Huff and Muller. The local boy, Norbert Michelisz in a BMW 320 TC, was the fastest in the YOKOHAMA Trophy class and in fourth overall in the session. This weekend, the grand stand was packed with many local fans who gathered to cheer on the 26 year Hungarian driver.

The formation lap for Race 1 - the seventh of the championship - began at 12:16 p.m. The weather was fine with the air temperature at 27 degree centigrade and the surface temperature at 48. It was quite hot when the time to start came.

After a rolling start, the field rushed into Turn 1. The pole sitter, Menu, went through the tight right-hander without any trouble and led the race. But Muller came to the first corner in a close pack with Tom Coronel, Kristian Poulsen and others and the almost inevitable contact with them sent the Chevrolet driver off the track and caused him to lost a lot of ground there.

At Turn 3 on the lap, Dahlgren went off the track in the aftermath of a battle with Gabriele Tarquini and a few others. Unfortunately, he was forced to make a pit stop to repair his Volvo's suspension and other damaged parts.

After these messes on the opening lap settled down, it was Michelisz who closely followed the race leader. The top two soon built up a considerable gap with the others and it looked almost certain that it was a two-horse race between Menu and Michelisz.

This naturally exited the spectators at Hungaroring. Every time the two drivers came back to the pit straight in tail-to-nose, great roars of cheers with deafening sound of air horns rose from the grandstand and echoed around the circuit, of course, mainly for the local hero.

While the gap between them got even closer in the final laps, Menu managed to cross the finish line first, a mere 1.047 second ahead of the young Hungarian, to score the Swiss's second win of the season since Race 2 of Brazilian round. Michelisz finished in second and the Hungarian national flag proudly flew over the podium.

The fight for the third place was decided in the last lap. Villa overtook Tarquini at Turn 1 of the lap while they were making physical contact with each other. They went on very closely but, eventually, the Spaniard kept his position and finished in third. The Italian ended the race in sixth, following Huff and Muller, after an excursion during the lap due to the fierce battle with Villa.

Before the start of Race 2, the runner-up of the first race, Michelisz, received a great cheer from the spectators when he took his car to the grid. As the top ten qualifiers of Q1 were placed on the grids in reversed order, the pole sitter was Mehdi Bennani in a BMW 320 TC and Menu, Poulsen, Coronel and Tiago Monteiro made up the grids.

When the red signals blacked out at a standing start for Race 2, sure enough, the rear wheel drive BMWs made good getaway from the grids. Menu was immediately sucked into the pack and was overtaken by Poulsen and Coronel on both sides. From the sixth grid, Michelisz also tried to make a big gain by taking the most inside line for Turn 1.

But he was overly optimistic as the right-hand wheels of his car were already off the track so he couldn't turn in properly and dove into the group of leading cars which were already in the middle of corner. Consequently, he hit the rear quarter of Poulsen's car and the front quarter of Bennani's and caused a huge mess only a few seconds after the start.

On Lap 2, rain drops began to fall and all cars started to use their wind screen wipers. Then it turned to a heavy downpour in less than a minute and the track became completely soaked by rain. As everyone started, of course, with slick tires, the race had to be stopped by the red flag because it was too dangerous to continue under the conditions.

The cars halted before the designated 'red flag line' and then were sent to the grids, according to the order when the race was interrupted, to wait for the re-start with their tires changed to the wets.

About 15 minutes later, the rain stopped and the race resumed at 14:05 following a track condition check by the Safety Car. The second part of the race got underway with the Safety Car leading the field because this was the first time for the drivers to drive on the wet track in this weekend.

When the Safety Car headed to the pit lane, Tarquini made a good start and pulled away by choosing the best timing to begin accelerating at the last corner before the re-start to delude the following drivers, including Coronel, Menu and Muller. But the Swiss ended his race soon, as he collided with Coronel and crashed on the first lap of proper racing after re-start.

Now Muller was in pursuit of Taruquini. The Frenchman gradually closed the gap with the race leader and overtook the Italian at Turn 13 of Lap 7 by holding the inside line for the corner. Four laps later, Muller's surviving teammate, Huff, also attacked Tarquini at Turn 14 and his successful move resulted in the Chevrolet's 1-2 formation.

Thus, the eventful second race of the day ended with Muller's first victory of the season and Huff followed to his teammate.

As for the YOKOHAMA Trophy class, Franz Engstler finished first in the class by displaying a steady drive in very difficult conditions.