Looking back the four races in first two rounds of the FIA World Touring Car Championship this year, Chevrolet has scored three victories and has clearly been in control. But, from this Italian round, the compensate weights were applied to equalize the performance of each of the car models.

Autodromo di Monza, the venue of the Italian round, is famous for its ultra-high speed layout among the tracks which the WTCC regularly visits. Chevrolet has a good track record in this kind of circuit and this proved to be true again despite a 40kg weight handicap that their cars had to carry.

But, in Q1 of the qualifying session on Saturday, which decided the top ten qualifiers who would proceed to Q2, the first three slots were dominated by BMW 320TCs. Tom Coronel led the trio with the fastest time of 1'59"907 and was followed by Norbert Michelisz and Kristian Poulsen.

The fastest Chevrolet driver in Q1 was a YOKOHAMA trophy contender, Darryl O'Young, in fourth. As for the American manufacturer's registered factory cars, Alain Menu ended it in fifth, Yvan Muller in seventh and Robert Huff in ninth. This might appear unimpressive for them but it wasn't too bad if you took the new rules from this year into account.

The new rules set down that the top ten qualifiers in Q1 should be placed on the staring grids for Race 2 in reversed order. Therefore, the pole position for the second race of the day was given to Tiago Monteiro who was tenth in Q1 and Huff was to start the race from the second grid.

The following Q2 saw, however, the full blown speed of Chevrolet's factory cars, as if they had saved their pace in Q1 for better grid positions for Race 2. Huff was the fastest among them and secured his third consecutive pole position from the season opener to sit on the first grid for Race 1, which was now considered as the reserved seat for him!

The warm-up session on Sunday morning was run on damp surfaces due to rain from the night before. But the conditions improved after that and the track surfaces were completely dry when the starting procedures for the first race began.

The formation lap for Race 1 - the championship's fifth race - got underway at 13:00 (20:00 JST). Led by three brilliant blue colored Chevrolet Cruzes, the field in double file came up from the last corner and then the red signals went off.

The Chevrolet drivers displayed some fierce battles between them as early as the second half of the opening lap. Particularly, Muller and Menu came back to the straightaway, running side by side and the Swiss outbraked at the first chicane and managed to take over the lead.

Since a lap of the Italian track is longer than that of other circuits, both races in this round were run for nine laps each. During the middle stage, the top three pulled away from the rest of the field and formed their own group. Meanwhile, the Belgian round winner, Gabriele Tarquini, had contact with Poulsen's BMW, which caused some damage on the front suspension of Italian's SEAT Leon. As a result, Tarquini was force to come back to his pit after completing Lap 3 and ended his race there.

After the halfway point, the fight between Chevrolet teammates continued. Applying relentless pressure on the race leader, Menu slightly hit Huff's car from behind at Ascari corner. The Briton managed to keep his position by quickly catching his car but his rear bumper was damaged as a consequence of the contact and was partly coming off from the car.

Then, on the final lap, Muller in third had contact with Menu in front of him just before they came to Resmo, as the Frenchman was pushing his teammate very hard. Unfortunately, Menu lost control of his car and went off the track towards the guardrail on the right-hand side. After hitting the barrier, his car was kicked back to cut across the track and ultimately halt on the run off area on the opposite side.

Being away from the incident between his teammates, Huff remained in the lead position throughout the race and secured his third win of the season from the pole position. Chevrolet accomplished another 1-2, as Muller finished the race in second.

The battle for third became even hotter in the closing stage. Monteiro running in third and Michelisz exited the last corner of the penultimate lap side by side but, just after they crossed the start/finish line, Michelisz got ahead of his opponent. Then they drove the whole final lap in tail to nose and ran parallel to each other again when they cleared the last corner. It was a head to head race until the finish line where the checkered flag was shown.

The eyes of their team crew were glued on the timing monitors when the two cars crossed the line. Eventually, the Portuguese completed the lap only 0.23 second faster to regain the third place. Though Michelisz narrowly missed an overall podium finish, he scored his first victory of the season in the YOKOHAMA Trophy class.

After a more than an hour interval to allow for a supporting race between the two WTCC races, the time to start Race 2 came. According to the result of Q1, Monteiro sat on the pole position, followed by Huff, Tarquini, Muller, Mehdi Bennani, O'Young and Poulsen.

As usual, Race 2 began with a standing start. Sure enough, the rear wheel drive BMWs made good getaways when the red lights went off and, particularly, Poulsen jumped up to third, thanks to his excellent judgment to take the inside line. In sharp contrast with this, the pole sitting Monteiro's start was mediocre and it allowed the two Chevrolet drivers to take up the leading positions easily.

At the end of Lap 1, Huff who started from the second grid was leading in front of his teammate, Muller. Despite being forced to start the race from the back end of grids because of DNF in Race 1, Menu already came up to 13th at this time.

While the two leading Chevrolets built a gap with a group contending the third, there was an incident in the latter at the first chicane when they entered Lap 5. The group was led by Monteiro, followed by Michelisz and Poulsen when they crossed the line but the Hungarian made a brave move to try to overtake the group leader. Although Michelisz got ahead of his opponent for a moment, he was too optimistic after all and had to run wide, resulting in losing a lot of positions. Watching the battle from behind, it was Poulsen who benefited. The Dane took the third place in one shot and was able to build a small gap with the other two.

The fight for the lead between Huff and Muller got fiercer in the second half of the race. On Lap 6, Huff applied the brakes a bit earlier than usual at the entry of final corner and this surprised Muller who was putting heavy pressure from close behind. As a result, the Frenchman had to hit his brakes hard but wasn't able to avoid driving into the tail of teammate's car. Though the Briton slightly lost the control of his car, he somehow managed to catch it and keep the position. On the next lap, the race stewards gave Muller a 'black and white' flag which warned him for the ungentlemanly conduct on the track.

Eventually, Huff held on to his lead until the checkered flag fell and accomplished a double win in one day. It was only third time in the WTCC history that a driver won both races of the day, following Muller who drove for SEAT then in 2005 and James Thompson in an Alfa Romeo in 2007.

As for the YOKOHAMA Trophy class, Poulsen secured the victory by finishing third overall, which was a brilliant achievement for a non-factory driver. When he headed to this Italian round, he was already the championship leader with only three points ahead of Javier Garcia. But now the Dane has 45 points and a 12 point gap with runner-ups, Michelisz, O'Young and Garcia, who all have 33 points.