The second round of the FIA World Touring Car Championship was held on the street track in Marrakech, Morocco. Since the championship's first ever and historic visit to the African continent in 2009, this was the fourth Moroccan round in the WTCC's history, with the absence from its calendar in 2011 only once so far.

The teams were supposed to have a 30 minute test session on Friday but it had to be cancelled because of heavy rain hitting the city of Marrakech. Fortunately, the weather improved on Saturday and two free practice sessions were run as scheduled under a clear sky. Then came the time for qualifying in the afternoon.

The star of the session was Gabriele Tarquini in a factory prepared Civic. He was the only driver who clocked a sub-105 second qualifying time ? 1'44”910 ? in Q1 and then further improved it to 1'44”358 in Q2. This was good enough for him to earn the maiden pole position for Honda Civic, beating the Chevrolet drivers, James Nash and Yvan Muller, who ended the session in second and third respectively.

Tarquini was starting the first race of the day ? the championship's third race ? from the highly advantageous place. Statistics show that more than 85% of the pole sitters win those races on the street tracks, while the percentage drops down to about 60% on the closed circuits. Looking back the past three events in Marrakech, every pole sitter, including the veteran Italian himself in 2010 at the wheel of a SEAT then, had won Race 1 just as predicted.

There was a thick fog early morning on Sunday but it went off until the warm up session began and the weather became fine. However, a few cars heavily crashed in the session and it caused some delay on the race day's time table, as it took time to repair the barriers alongside the track. Nevertheless, the course marshals' effort made it possible to start Race 1 just on time.

Behind the Safety Car, the field left grids for the formation lap and came back to the pit straight after exiting the last sharp-angled left hander, with Tarquini at the front of it. When the red signals went off, the whole field accelerated to rush into the first chicane which consists of Turn 1, 2 and 3, turning left, right and left again. The Honda driver remained in the lead position when they went through this first bottleneck.

Starting from the fourth grid, Michel Nykjaer in the Nika Racing run Chevrolet moved up to second by passing Muller and Nash. The Frenchman dropped to fourth and then gave way to Robert Huff in a Munnich Motorsport's SEAT Leon, who was on the seventh grid, after a duel during the latter half of the opening lap.

The battle between the ex-teammates became even hotter on Lap 2. Weaving his car on the straightaways, Muller put heavy pressure on Huff and came abreast of the Briton from Turn 12 to 14 only to step back for the time being. Then he tried to squeeze his car into the inside of Huff at the last corner but the SEAT driver managed to defend his position again.

With Nykjaer and Nash behind him, Tarquini was leading a three car pack at the front of the field. On Lap 3, Nykjaer tried to make a move at Turn 4 but the veteran Italian skillfully fended it off. On the other hand, Muller dove into the inside of Huff at the last corner again and his brilliant move through the narrow space led to the position change in their fight for fourth.

However, then Mehdi Bennani's BMW got in the way of the Frenchman, as the local driver came out from the pit after making a stop for repairs in the aftermath of an accident in which he had been involved. Muller tried every possible means, including turning on the headlights, to let the backmarker know he should give way but it took almost half a lap for Muller to pass the Moroccan.

At the end of Lap 5, the gap between Tarquini and Nykjaer was only 0.372 seconds. It was already obvious that the Dane, following closely behind the race leader, was watching for an opportunity to make a move and it finally came on the backstretch, in-between the two chicanes there. Nykjaer managed to get ahead of Tarquini well before they entered the second one and went through the next chicane and the last corner of Lap 6 as the new leader.

About this time, Tiago Monteiro crashed his Civic into the barrier at Turn 3, which caused the Safety Car to come out. As it took time to remove the Portuguese's halted car, the race resumed with only two laps to go.

While Tarqini was desperate to regain the lead position and kept putting pressure on Nyjkaer, the Dane remained unperturbed until he crossed the finish line to claim his first overall win in WTCC. After 54 races spanning five years that he has been active in the championship, Nykjaer finally got on the highest place of the overall podium and, of course, won the YOKOHAMA Trophy class, too. Tarquini came in second, followed by Nash who got a place on the WTCC podium for the first time.

After only half an hour intermission between the races, the time to start Race 2 came. There were 21 cars on the grids, one less than the starters of Race 1, because the damage to Monteiro's car was too heavy to repair in time, thus he had to withdraw from the second race.

As the top ten qualifiers in Q2 were placed in reversed order on the Race2 grids for a standing start, four SEAT drivers sat on the first two rows, namely Fernando Monje on the pole position, Pepe Oriola, Marc Basseng and Rob Huff.

There was no mess-up at the start, so the entire field reached the first corner without any accidents. Among the leading drivers, Oriola got slightly better acceleration from his grid and made a successful move to pass Monje on their approach to Turn 1. But it was Nash who made the best getaway of all. When the signal light blacked out, the Briton rocketed from the ninth grid and used the space on the outside edge of the track to pass by a bunch of cars in front of him. At the end of Lap 1, he was already running in third!

At Turn 4, Huff dove into the inside of Monje but the Briton's judge seemed to be a bit too optimistic. As a result, he went off the track and hit a nearby concrete wall, which forced him to retire on the spot. After defending the position from Huff's attack, however, Monje also made contact with James Thompson's Lada at Turn 10 on the next lap and had to end his race there. And things went from bad to worse for the Spaniard, as he was later given a five grid dropping penalty for the next race for causing an avoidable collision.

Oriola was comfortably leading the race and Muller was in pursuit together with his RML Chevrolet teammate, Tom Chilton, who moved up to third from the sixth grid at the start. Chilton didn't want to settle for third and actually came abreast of Muller's sister car but the Frenchman was in control of this battle within the team. The situation didn't help Chilton anyway, as the final sector of the track was under yellow flags in the aftermath of the accident between Monje and Thompson, which meant the opportunities for overtaking were limited further.

On Lap 8, another accident occurred. Tarquini lost control of his Civic when he was exiting Turn 10 and crashed into the barrier, entangling Alex MacDowall's Chevrolet on his way. Both of them were forced to end the race on the spot, which called for the Safety Car intervention for the second time on the day.

The Safety Car had to stay on the track until the end of Lap 12 and this meant that the race was resumed with only one lap to go! But the race leader, Oriola, made a clean restart and wasn't threatened by anyone from behind until he completed the final lap. As was the case for Nykjaer in Race 1, this was also the first overall victory in WTCC for Oriola. Muller finished in second and Chilton in third. The YOKOHAMA Trophy class was won by Nash who finished the race in fourth oveall.

The first street track races of the season in Marrakech were quite eventful ones which saw the Safety Car intervention in each of them.

The track consists mainly of several chicanes and straightaways between them and the tire temperature didn't tend to rise too much because the tires were cooled down when the cars were running on the straightaways. And the track surfaces have a lower friction coefficient in comparison with those special pavements in permanent circuits, so the loads on the tires were relatively lower here.

The track had been partially resurfaced but the new curbs at each chicanes had some sharp edges which was the main concern, as the drivers sometime hit them hard with their tires.

On the other hand, a lot of debris could be spread on the track when a crash occurs in a temporary street circuit like this. Actually, in this particular meeting, some drivers damaged their tires by driving over relatively large-sized debris. But the teams understood those damages were caused by the external factors and there was no tire-induced problem at all in this Moroccan round.