After the first two events in Latin American countries, the FIA World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) began its European leg, starting with the Spanish round at Valencia for the fifth and sixth races on 18th May.

There were two major concerns for the new participants. Firstly, a Honda Accord Euro R came back to the series after some sporadic entries in past seasons. This time, the N.Technology team, which terminated its relationship with Alfa Romeo at the end of last season, ran the car and series veteran James Thompson sat behind the wheel.

Secondly, Lada from Russia finally made its debut with a car named "110," as the first Russian car manufacturer entering a world championship race series. They had actually intended to enter the series in the past, but it didn't materialize until this event. However, because the car they brought to Valencia didn't comply with technical regulations, it was allowed to start the races only under the condition that it wasn't entitled to earn any championship points.

The WTCC is renowned as an environment-conscious race series. Before the race weekend, a presentation event was held at a local zoo for the publicity of the WTCC's approach to reduce the environmental load of motor sport. The series already has helped forestation to absorb an equal amount of carbon dioxide to that produced by race events in view of promoting carbon-neutralization.

The first two events of the season were totally dominated by the turbo diesel powered SEATs, which prompted further performance-equalization measures to be taken before the Spanish round. Because of this, it was widely expected that they would slow down to some extent, but Yvan Muller still had enough speed to take the pole position with his Leon TDI and his teammate, Gabriele Tarquini, followed to fill up the front row in Saturday's qualifying session.

However, it was Chevolret's Rob Huff who became the star of Race 1 (the fifth race of the series, 13 laps). Starting from the third grid, he moved up to second in the early stage of the race and then robbed Muller of his leading position on Lap 4. After that, the Briton pulled away and finished first with more than a five second gap ahead of Tarquini who eventually took second. This was Huff's first win of the season, following his last win in Sweden in 2007.

Race 2 (the sixth race of the series, 13 laps) started after a three hour interval. As the top eight grids for the race were arranged in reverse order from the result of Race 1, Alain Menu's Chevrolet Lacetti sat on the pole position and Andy Priaulx's BMW 320si followed.

Chevrolets were fast again in Race 2 and no one could threaten the leading position of Menu from behind. The difference of Success Weight between Menu and Priaulx might have affected the situation because the former had only 3kg while the latter had 14kg on his car.

The winner of Race 1, Huff, also performed well and actually finished in second after another strong run from the eighth grid, following his race leading teammate. This completed Chevolret's 1-2 finish in Race 2 and wrapped up a really good weekend for the American marque.

As for the YOKOHAMA Independent Trophy, Stefano D'Aste and Sergio Hernandez, both driving Proteam entered BMW 320si's, won in Race 1 and Race 2 respectively.