With two Chevrolet drivers leading the championship in a tie after the first ever US round, the 2012 World Touring Car Championship now entered the final three Asian events. The first of the three, the Japanese round, was held at Suzuka East short course.

Alain Menu remained on the top of time sheets from the official test session on Friday to the two free practices on Saturday. And the trend continued even in the qualifying session. Although the Swiss was in second in Q1, as his best time was only 0.044 second shy of Yvan Muller's fastest time, Menu went out on the track as soon as Q2 began and clocked 52"885 before the track surfaces became dusty. Muller did the same but he couldn't beat his teammate, as his lap time at the attempt was 52"950. After that, the track conditions were getting worse because of the dust that was brought in by the cars briefly went off the track and it was almost impossible for everyone to improve the qualifying time.

While Muller and Robert Huff made their attempts again just before the session ended, both of them couldn't get into a 52" bracket. As a result, Menu secured the pole position for Race 1, as he had done last year at Suzuka. Muller and Huff took the second and third grids respectively. With Alex MacDowall in another Chevrolet Cruze claiming the fourth grid as the highest placed YOKOHAMA Trophy contender, the first two rows were dominated by the American marque. By adding the championship points for the qualifying result, Chevrolet secured the manufacturer's title crown for three consecutive years.

The debutant in this Japanese round, the sole Honda Civic driven by Tiago Monteiro, ended Q1 in seventh and missed the pole position for Race 2 by only one place, as the Portuguese was the eleventh fastest in Q2, but the Japanese car still looked promising.

As for the YOKOHAMA Trophy title contenders, Pepe Oriola, who was in second in the point standings, was ninth in Q2, which meant he would start Race 2 from the front row. In contrast, the current championship leader Norbert Michelisz couldn't make his way into Q2, as he ended Q1 in lowly 14th.

The weather was fine on Sunday. With air/surface temperatures at 23.3/41.7 degrees Celsius, it was comfortable for everyone at the circuit. The formation lap for the rolling start of Race 1 got underway at a half past two p.m. as scheduled, the 26 lap race began when the red signals went off after the field completed the slow rolling lap.

From the sixth grid, Gabriele Tarquini got better acceleration than others around him and passed Mehdi Bennani by taking his SEAT Leon to the outside. Then the Italian got ahead of MacDowall, with slight contact between them, at Turn 2 to move up to fourth. At the front, Muller became almost abreast of the pole sitting Menu at the first corner but the Swiss kept his cool and fended off the teammate's attack through Turn 1 and 2. When they completed the opening lap, Menu was leading Muller with a 0.861 second gap, followed by Huff 0.422 second behind the Frenchman, so it was almost certain that it was going to be a three-way race between the factory Chevrolet drivers.

On the other hand, the battles in the midfield were fierce from the early stage. On Lap 4, Hiroki Yoshimoto bravely dove to the inside of Michelisz and moved up to 15th. Then the Japanese managed to pass Tom Boardman on the next lap but the Briton wouldn't give up easily and tried to regain the position, putting heavy pressure on Yoshimoto by squeezing his car into every tiny space he found. After the close fights between them for several laps, however, Yoshimoto went wide at the last corner on Lap 11, resulting in giving way to Boardman, and then Michelisz also got ahead of him at the entry of Turn 1 on the next lap.

After passing Yoshimoto, Boardman and Michelisz continued their dogfight. On Lap 18, the latter slightly hit the former's car from behind between Turn 1 and 2 and the Briton almost went into spinning but he managed to catch the car before that and didn't give way.

At the front, three Chevrolet drivers were comfortably leading the others in close formation between them. Because the Suzuka East short course doesn't easily allow overtaking moves, there was no position change among them until the checkered flag fell and Menu repeated the Race 1 victory again as he had done last year.

Monteiro in the sole Civic finished the race in tenth, after displaying an exciting drive that included the hot side-by-side battle with Darryl O'Young, without minding physical contact, in the early stage. Then, after the race, the Portuguese was promoted to ninth because of a 30 second time penalty given to Aleksei Dudukalo who finished the race in sixth. MacDowall won the YOKOHAMA Trophy class for the first time in his WTCC career by finishing in fifth overall.

After a 30 minute intermission, the cars left their pit garages for the starting grids of Race 2. The pole position was given to Stefano D'Aste in a BMW 320TC and he was followed by Oriola and Dudukalo, both in SEAT Leon, and Tom Coronel in another BMW.

As usual, the cars to watch at the standing start for Race 2 were the rear wheel drive BMWs that would normally benefit from a slight advantage in that stating procedure and, for this time, many expected Coronel's great start from the second row. When the red signal blacked out, however, the Dutchman made a costly mistake and lost a lot of ground in the first few seconds of the race. This made D'Aste's life easier and he led the field through the first corner effortlessly. Behind them, another BMW driver, Bennani made a much better start than Coronel did from the sixth grid and moved up to third. While he was passed by Tarquini at Turn 1, the Moroccan still kept the fourth place.

The poorest victim of the first lap pushing and shoving was Michelisz. Being hit by someone from behind at Turn 3, he went off the track and crashed into the barrier. As a result, the Hungarian became the first retirement of the race, while his main rival in the YOKOHAMA Trophy title contention, Oriola, was running in second overall, which marked a sharp contrast between them.

In terms of the drivers' championship fight, the attention was focused on how the Chevrolet factory drivers would come through the field from the eighth to tenth grids they started from. But it took more time than expected for them to move up because Bennani in fourth firmly refused to give way to the Huff-Menu-Muller formation, resisting heavy pressure from them.

As the top three weren't able to pull away from the Moroccan, the close leading pack now consisted of as many as seven cars of D'Aste, Oriola, Tarquini, Bennani and three Chevrolet factory drivers. On Lap 9, Huff tried to dive into the inside of Bennani at Turn 1 but without success. Meanwhile, the race leading D'Aste was trying to build a gap and pushing so hard that, on the same lap, he touched a tire barrier - placed to prevent drivers from shortcutting the corners - with his side mirror which was torn off on the spot.

The leading seven cars, with a few tenth second gaps each between them, went on without any position change for a while but the stalemate was broken on the 24th lap of the 26 lap race. Huff managed to squeeze his car into a space inside of Bennani at Turn 2 and finally passed him. Then, in the wake of Huff's move, Menu followed his teammate's path to get ahead of the Moroccan in quick succession. Now their next target was Tarquini in third. On the penultimate lap, Huff tried to overtake the Italian from the outside at Turn 1 but the SEAT driver also steered his car to the outside, as he was catching Oriola in front of him, so they had to keep their positions. But, taking advantage of the moves behind him, D'Aste could extend his lead to about 2.5 seconds on this lap.

As there was no drama after that, D'Aste claimed his second win of the season since the Austrian round five months ago. And Oriola's second place finish meant the first ever overall one-two by the YOKOHAMA Trophy contenders in the WTCC history. Tarquini came in third, followed by Huff, Menu and Muller. After the Suzuka round, surprisingly, the championship leaders, Muller and Huff, were still in a tie with 345 points each! The fight for the drivers' title became even more heated.

After being classified in ninth in the first race, Monteiro finished Race 2 in tenth and scored a point, which meant the series debutant Honda Civic earned points in both races of the day.

Overtaking was extremely difficult at this Suzuka East short course but the three factory Chevrolet drivers were pushing hard with each other from the start to finish in Race 1 and dominated the podium at the end of the race. The condition of their tires after the race showed all three drivers had managed the tires equally well. So it can be said that the factory Chevrolet team was comprehensively strong both in the car set up and the drivers' skill to extract the performance of the tires.

The Honda Civic, which made its debut in this meeting, was a little hard on the tires but it can be improved by finding out a better car set up. Considering its double point finishes at Suzuka, the potential was there and the car showed a promising sign for further improvement in future.

Generally speaking, the surfaces of Japanese race tracks have slightly different characteristics from those of European circuits. But the leading teams were well aware of it and, by gathering and analyzing the information on the difference prior to this event, they seemed to find the right set up quickly, which guaranteed the preferable car behavior.