The 12 round calendar of the 2012 World Touring Car Championship has already reached the end of its first half in this Round 6 in Austria. This was the first visit for the championship to the country and thus Salzburgring was one of four first-time race tracks in this year's WTCC calendar.

The fastest driver in both of the two free practice sessions on Saturday, 19 May, was Alain Menu in one of the factory Chevrolet Cruzes. The Swiss was quick to learn this 4.225km circuit and this was another proof of the fact he had been the man to beat especially on the first-time race track for the championship.

In the qualifying session on the same day, Norbert Michelisz, who had claimed the famous home victory in the Hungarian round, missed getting into the top 12 in Q1, as he ended the session in lowly 15th. On the other hand, Tom Coronel made his way into Q2 by clocking the sixth fastest time in Q1, putting an end to his Q2 drought for a couple of events.

At the front, however, Chevrolets were dominant force in the qualifying session once again. The American marque swept the top four in Q1, as Yvan Muller clocked the fastest time, followed by Menu, Robert Huff and a YOKOHAMA Trophy contender, Alex MacDowall, in a Bamboo-Engineering run Cruze. The Q2 was also dominated by the factory Chevrolet drivers but in a different order, Huff, Muller and Menu. The SEAT ace Gabriele Tarquini took fourth place this time but MacDowall was still the fastest in the YOKOHAMA Trophy class and was in fifth overall.

The first race on Sunday began with a rolling start as usual. In front of the intently watching spectators, the top four kept their positions at the first corner but Tiago Monteiro, starting from the sixth grid in a Sunred Leon 1.6T, passed MacDowall and swapped their positions. Similarly, two SEAT drivers, Pepe Oriola and Aleksei Dudukalo, gained one position each, beating Stefano D'Aste and Coronel who started the race from the seventh and ninth grids respectively.

The leading Chevrolet trio in blue cars were flying and quickly pulled away from the rest of the field. At the end of Lap 2, there was already a 2.209 second gap between Menu in third and Tarquini in fourth. So the podium domination by the factory Chevrolets seemed to be inevitable even at this early stage of the race.

On Lap 5, Darryl O'Young in a Special Tuning Racing's SEAT dove into the inside of D'Aste at Turn 1 but the Hong Kong resident made a mistake in the process when he was putting on the brake hard, resulting in a collision with the Italian. Both cars were considerably damaged and O'Young's car halted on the side of the track and caught fire, while D'Aste managed to bring the car back to his pit. The fire wasn't so serious but it required the intervention of the Safety Car on Lap 6.

The racing resumed on Lap 10 and, soon after that, the fight between the top two teammates hotter. Muller tried to get ahead of Huff on Lap 11 and they actually went through Turn 8 to 11 side-by-side. But the Briton managed to fend off the teammate's move and kept his lead position until the checkered flag fell. This was his second win of the season since the second race of the Slovakian round.

After being passed by Monteiro at the start, MacDowall drove a clean race to finish in sixth overall and scored his first ever YOKOHAMA Trophy class victory.

For Race 2 - the championship's 12th race, Dudukalo sat on the pole position, followed by Coronel, Oriola and D'Aste, so the two SEATs and two BMWs were placed in alternate order on the first two rows. As for the factory Chevrolets, Menu was on the eighth grid and he was followed by Muller and Huff in ninth and tenth respectively.

At the standing start for the second race of the day, two BMW drivers got a good acceleration as predicted and they formed an early 1-2 led by the Dutchman when the field went into the first corner.

But the hot pursuit of the factory Chevrolets surpassed the speed of escaping BMW duo and Muller snatched the lead position on Lap 4. As his teammates followed suit soon after that, the Chevrolet trio locked out their opponents from the top three slots, as they had done in Race 1, by the end of Lap 7.

However, their overwhelming pace eventually led to most unexpected development. On Lap 8, Menu running in third suddenly went off the track at Turn 9 and crashed into the barrier, resulting in his retirement at the spot. Shortly after that, the YOKOHAMA Trophy winner of Race 1, MacDowall did exactly same thing on the same spot and consequently hit the Menu's stranded car, while the Swiss driver had just left the car and, therefore, was safe.

The cause of the two driver's crash was tire failure. The teams and drivers were aware that the characteristics of Salzburgring were extremely hard on the tires and knew that the tire management during the races would be important. During Race 1, however, the severity of conditions was somewhat reduced by the Safety Car period and rather quiet development of the race. But Race 2 didn't have such a relief factor and the heavy strain on tires just fell over the edge of tolerable levels.

On the final lap, the race leading Muller also had a tire failure at Turn 10. This gave Huff the lead position but the Briton suffered the same problem just a few seconds later when he was entering the last corner of the race! As his Chevrolet suddenly slowed down, Coronel who was following to the new leader was forced to hit the brake. This created an unexpected opportunity for D'Aste to overtake them in one move because the Italian took a slightly different line from the two drivers in front of him. Thus the drama at the very last-minute of the race saw D'Aste's overall victory and this meant that a YOKOHAMA Trophy contender claimed an overall win for the second successive rounds, following to the same feat by Michelisz in Hungary.

It was already predicted that Salzburgring would be toughest race track for the tires among the WTCC venues this year. The main reason for that was the fact that the Austrian track includes a couple of corners that have a fairly steep cant, as such steep cant gives the tires higher than usual vertical load. On top of this, the surfaces were rather slippery, which means the tires tend to heat up because of slipping. Every driver and team knew this and was more careful than usual about the tire management from the beginning of the free practice session.

But, in Race 2, the fights for position of leading cars were fierce from the reversed grids standing start, which caused the more than predicted loads and heat building up on their tires and, ultimately, a spate of tire failures.

Reflecting on the policy of the race organizers, the WTCC tires have basically remained the same since Yokohama Rubber became the sole tire supplier for the championship in 2006. During this period, however, many new models have been introduced and the strain on tires has been increasing year after year, as the cars became heavier and more powerful after switching to 1.6 liter turbo engines. This has particularly been punishing the front tires of front wheel drive cars and emerged as the failures of left front tires of those cars this time in the race track which have a few long right hand corners.