Since its inception, the FIA World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) has been favoured by many motor sport fans all over the world thanks to exciting battles in every race event. For its third season, several new venues were added to the calendar and Port, Portugal is one such venue.

Last year, the final round of the series, the Macau Grand Prix, was the sole street course event. But this year, Pau in France and Porto in Portugal are on the calendar which means that three events are to be held on the street circuit.

Particularities of the street course events are that there is virtually no escape zone on the track and that the surface condition is very tough. Specifically, the surface is totally different from the purpose-made ones of the permanent circuits because they also serve as public roads for day-to-day traffic from passenger cars to large trucks.

This means that the races are tough for tires too. But Yokohama Rubber Co. has unique expertise and experience acquired through the involvement in Macau Grand Prix and Le Mans 24 Hours race over the years.

The races were really exciting, which is typical of WTCC events. Although the overtaking points were very limited in the street circuit, the drivers aggressively displayed close battles.

In the first race of the event, the Chevrolet team showed consistentency after monopolising the top three spots in the qualifing session. Not being hindered by accidents with the following cars, they kept their positions throughout the race. Consequently, Alan Menu took the checkered flag first and scored his third win of the season, followed by his teammates, Rob Huff and Nicola Larini. Menu's victory was his second win on street circuits as he had already won Race 1 in Pau.

The second race was also exciting. In the early stage of the race, Andy Priaulx of BMW passed Jorge Muller who started from the pole position in a similar car and took the lead. The two drivers executed a close battle until the end without changing their positions, which resulted in Priaulx's first win of the season.

Among the other competitors, last year's Independent Trophy winner, Tom Coronel, showed promise with his performance and finished sixth in Race 1 and fourth in Race 2. It is quite probable that he will make a podium finish in the near future.

Born in Netherlands, April 5th, 1972.

Starting with Citroen AX Cup in 1991, he gained some experience in the Netherlands's domestic touring car races and formula car races.
In 1996, he participated in the Japanese Formula 3 Championship and took the title with six wins the next year. Then, he drove in Formula Nippon and the Japanese GT Championship (JGTC) series and won the championship of Formula Nippon in 1999.
For the 2000 season, he moved back to Europe and mainly took part in the European Touring Car Championship (ETCC), but he entered both ETCC and JGTC in 2003. Because of such a curriculum vitae, he is very well known in Japan.
Having driven for SEAT since WTCC's inaugural year in 2005, he won the YOKOHAMA Independent Trophy in 2006.

Born in England, December 25th, 1979.

After scoring five wins each in the Pro-Kart Endurance series in 1992 and 1997, he started his career as a car race driver in 1998. In 1999, he took part in the British MG BCV8 Championship and then the British Formula Vauxhall Championship the following year and won both titles.
Having gained some more experience in other categories including Formula Renault, he competed in the 2004 British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) with a SEAT Tredo and scored two wins.
Since 2005, he has been driving for Chevrolet in the WTCC three years running.

Porto (Portugal)

The temporary street course is set up in the city of Porto and its length is 4,720m. The second largest city of Portugal is located in the northern part of the country and known as a town that has a lot of hills. The area around the city has been called Porto Cale, which was the origin of the country name, Portugal.

The track itself goes between guardrails, as it does in Macau, and there is a chicane made up with safety barriers on the straight, which adds more excitement to the characteristic of the track. Of course, it is used as public road before and after the race events. Therefore, the condition of the surface is really tough for purpose-made racing tires.