Esteban Guerrieri takes win in a wet Nürburgring Race 1

Münnich Motorsport’s Esteban Guerrieri has won the first race at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, leading three Lynk & Co cars, with Yvan Muller and Yann Ehrlacher completing the podium.
The race started behind the safety car as it began raining across the circuit at various points ahead of the start, with Muller starting from pole position ahead of Guerrieri’s Honda and Tom Coronel’s Comtoyou Racing Audi.
After two laps around the Grand Prix loop behind the safety car, the race started, with Muller passed in a daring move by Guerrieri at Arenberg soon after they joined the Nordschleife.
Guerrieri then began to pull away, while Muller was now being hounded by Coronel, with the Lynk & Co cars of Thed Björk and Ehrlacher behind him.
At the end of the first lap, Jack Young crashed out in his Vuković Motorsport Renault, while Mikel Azcona’s Zengő Motorsport CUPRA stopped at the Karusell with an apparent engine issue.
On the second lap, the front runners remained in order, while Santiago Urrutia was working his way forwards after starting on the final row and passed the Honda of Tiago Monteiro and the Audi of Gilles Magnus to move up to eighth.
On the Grand Prix section at the start of the third and final lap, Björk made a lunge down the inside of Coronel and took third, with Ehrlacher also able to make his way through, and from then on Björk found himself under attack for his team-mate for the remainder of the­ lap, with Ehrlacher making his move at Döttinger Hohe to take third.
Two more cars stopped on the final lap, with Attila Tassi’s Honda crashing out of sixth at Adenau, with Urrutia, who had now moved up to sixth in place, stopping in the fourth sector.
Up front, Guerrieri won the race by over three seconds ahead of Muller, with Ehrlacher third and Björk fourth, with Coronel dropping down to fifth.
Ehrlacher continues to lead the championship on 68 points, with Néstor Girolami nine points behind, and Muller third.
Race 2 takes place at 10:00 CEST tomorrow, with Girolami starting on pole position ahead of his title rival Ehrlacher.

Race 1
1. Esteban Guerrieri (Münnich Motorsport, Honda Civic Type R), 3 laps
2. Yvan Muller (Cyan Racing, Lynk & Co 03), 3.385
3. Yann Ehrlacher (Cyan Performance, Lynk & Co 03), 3.999
4. Thed Björk (Cyan Performance, Lynk & Co 03), 4.903
5. Tom Coronel (Comtoyou Racing, Audi RS 3 LMS), 12.298

Championship points
1. Yann Ehrlacher 67 pts; 2. Néstor Girolami 56; 3. Yvan Muller 51 
 

Picture: WTCR/DPPI