Menu leads Huff and Turkington early in the race - Photo Credit: fiawtcc.com
Alain Menu kept Colin Turkington at bay to win the very first World Touring Car Championship race at Tianma in Shanghai.
Starting from pole position, Menu maintained his lead at the start ahead of Chevrolet teammate Rob Huff and Wiechers BMW driver Turkington, who this weekend was making just his third appearance of the season.
In the middle of the race Turkington looked much faster than his fellow Brit Huff, and made his way past on lap 13. From there he set after Menu, quickly closing a gap of more than 1.5 seconds down to just three tenths within five laps. He was unable to find a way through though, and Menu would open up his lead again to 1.2s by the checkered flag.
Huff's third place allowed him to reduce the gap to championship leader Yvan Muller slightly – the Frenchman finishing behind him in fourth after starting seventh. Muller had taken the place from Norbert Michelisz on lap 18, the Hungarian BMW driver then losing two further places to Tom Coronel and Kristian Poulsen further round the lap.
Michelisz would drop out of the top ten entirely before the end of the race, leaving Mehdi Bennani to finish seventh, ahead of Tiago Monteiro, Robert Dahlgren and Javier Villa.
Gabriele Tarquini had started fifth, but lost several places early on before retiring to the pits with brake problems.
Race results -25 laps:
| Pos | Driver | Team | Car | Gap |
| 1 | Alain Menu | Chevrolet | Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T | 28:05.718 |
| 2 | Colin Turkington | Wiechers | BMW 320 TC | 1.222 |
| 3 | Robert Huff | Chevrolet | Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T | 5.065 |
| 4 | Yvan Muller | Chevrolet | Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T | 8.005 |
| 5 | Tom Coronel | ROAL | BMW 320 TC | 9.010 |
| 6 | Kristian Poulsen | Engstler | BMW 320 TC | 9.921 |
| 7 | Mehdi Bennani | Proteam | BMW 320 TC | 15.487 |
| 8 | Tiago Monteiro | SUNRED | Sunred SR Leon 1.6T | 22.630 |
| 9 | Robert Dahlgren | Polestar | Volvo C30 Drive | 26.204 |
| 10 | Javier Villa | Proteam | BMW 320 TC | 27.118 |
| 11 | Norbert Michelisz | Zengo | BMW 320 TC | 28.291 |
| 12 | Franz Engstler | Engstler | BMW 320 TC | 28.539 |
| 13 | Darryl O'Young | Bamboo | Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T | 38.072 |
| 14 | Michel Nykjaer | SUNRED | Sunred SR Leon 1.6T | 53.157 |
| 15 | Aleksei Dudukalo | SUNRED | Sunred SR Leon 1.6T | 59.011 |
| 16 | Charles Ng | KK | BMW 320 TC | 1:41.155 |
| 17 | Pepe Oriola | SUNRED | Sunred SR Leon 1.6T | +1 lap |
| 18 | Fabio Fabiani | Engstler | BMW 320si | +1 lap |
| 19 | Philip Ma | Proteam | BMW 320si | +1 lap |
| 20 | Yukinori Taniguchi | Bamboo | Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T | +2 laps |
| 21 | Fredy Barth | SUNRED | Sunred SR Leon 1.6T | +4 laps |
| Ret | Gabriele Tarquini | SUNRED | Sunred SR Leon 1.6T | 15 laps |
