Coming back to a "normal" race track after the temporary street course of Pau, the ninth and tenth rounds of the 2008 FIA World Touring Car Championship were run at Brno, Czech Republic.

As it approached the middle phase of the season, the battle for the championship title has increasingly intensified. This time, the star of the races was Alex Zanardi of BMW Team Italy-Spain, who registered the fastest time in the official qualifying session on Saturday. As a result, the Italian driver was to start the first race on Sunday (Race 1, the ninth race of the series) from his first pole position in the WTCC. One of the favorites and the fastest driver in the second practice session, Jorg Muller (BMW Team Germany) made a mistake on his qualifying run and had to settle for lowly seventeenth.

Race 1 started at twenty minutes past noon. While the pole sitter, Zanardi, kept his position, his teammate Felix Porteiro (starting from the third grid) overtook Alan Menu's Chevrolet Lacetti and formed a one-two of BMW Team Italy-Spain.

Behind the top three, Augusto Farfus of BMW Team Germany provided the highlight of the race. Starting from the eighth grid, he passed three rivals on Lap 5 and 6, Rob Huff in another Chevrolet being the first victim, and then, on Lap 8, overtook Gabriele Tarquini's SEAT Leon TDI at Turn 1 to move up to fourth at last.

Cheered by his team crew at the pit wall, Zanardi accomplished a pole-to-win, which was actually his first win in this series, and Porteiro followed to celebrate a perfect result for the team.

Race 2, the tenth round of the series, began at a half past three in the afternoon. According to the result of Race 1, Yvan Muller of the SEAT Sport team sat on the pole position for the second race of the day, followed by James Thompson driving N.Technology's Honda Accord.

At the first corner immediately after the start, there were some aggressive battles that saw Jorg Muller and Farfus, both in BMW 320si, made brave moves to get higher positions but then Thompson fought back to second at the next turn. They used every inch of this 5.4km long circuit to contend for the lead position and completed the opening lap with Yvan Muller being the race leader and Tarquini in second.

While the Frenchman driving a diesel powered SEAT was passed by his Italian teammate soon after, the battle for third was also very tight and intense, which is quite typical of a WTCC race. In this pack, Farfus dropped down in the ranks because he was hit by one of his rivals and lost the control for a moment. On the other hand, Menu moved up to fourth and started to push Thompson's Honda in front of him.

On Lap 3, the Swiss driver managed to pass Thompson. The latter dropped back further as the other drivers exploited the former's move to wedge away Thompson and he nearly spun off in the wake of his rivals' rush.

Meanwhile, Zanardi pulled away from the pack and pursued the leading SEATs. Keeping the momentum of his maiden win in Race 1, he overtook Muller and deprived him of the runner-up position on Lap 6. The Italian registered the fastest lap time of the race on Lap 7 (2'10"470) and bettered it on Lap 9 (2'10"371) in the process of charging.

After catching the tail of Tarquini's SEAT, Zanardi made a determined attack on the final lap but Tarquini narrowly managed to defend his position and the two Italian drivers finished first and second with only a 0.36 second gap. It was Tarquini's second win of the season since his first in Curitiba, Brazil.