The sixth round - 11th and 12th races ? of the 2013 FIA World Touring Car Championship was held at Moscow Raceway near the Russian capital. This was the first time for the championship to visit the country.

The state-of-the-art 3,931m long international race track was inaugurated in July last year. Being built on a hilly terrain, it has uphills and downhills and the track layout is a combination of long straightaways and a lot of technical corners. It also has sufficient track width and a plenty of run-off areas, so there's almost no concern in terms of the driver's safety.

As the teams had no previous knowledge on the Russian track, a test session was given on Friday. Then, after two practice sessions on Saturday, the result from these three sessions predicted that the races on Sunday would be very unpredictable. Because, although the fastest driver in each session didn't cause any surprise ? Yvan Muller on Friday and, then, Tom Coronel and Muller again on Saturday, the leading drivers were so closely packed. To be exact, the seven leading drivers of the test session were covered in only a second and the same applied to the top 16 out of 23 competitors of the first practice session and to the top ten in the second one.

The qualifying session saw Muller taking the pole position for Race 1, followed by Coronel, which meant a front wheel driver car and a rear wheel driver car shared the front row. Other remarkable qualifying results were James Thompson's sixth place with his Lada Granta and Charles Ng Ka Ki's ninth place.

The race day was favored by fine weather and some might even have felt sweaty under the bright sunshine. To the great joy of local fans, Thompson put his Russian car on the top of the time sheet in the warm up session on Sunday morning.

Race 1 began with a rolling start as usual. Led by Muller on the inside and alongside with Coronel, the field that was formed into pairs completed the rolling lap and, when the go sign was given, everyone made full acceleration with roaring exhaust noises. On the approach to the first corner, Muller and Coronel slightly hit each other but the Frenchman kept the lead position when they went through Turn 1.

However, there was a multi-car pile-up behind the leaders. Ng Ka Ki got into a tangle with Freddy Barth and the latter hit the former's car heavily in the crowded pack. With two more innocent victims being involved in this incident, there were a huge amount of debris left on the track, so the race control had to send the Safety Car to control the field while the track marshals were working to clear the debris and the halted cars. But the story had another unusual twist then.

After three laps of Safety Car period, the red flag was suddenly shown and the race was interrupted. This was due to a failure of a large tow truck which was on its way to remove the halted race cars! Removing the halted tow truck was certainly the most unexpected job for the marshals and it took more than 20 minutes to finish.

The race resumed with the Safety Car start and, when the Safety Car came in, Muller was still in the lead but Coronel closely followed him. As the tow truck, which stranded on the track during the Safety Car period, was parked in the run off area on the outside of Turn 1, the section was under the yellow flag for the rest of the race, so the Dutchman wasn't allowed to make a move on the corner. This reduced Coronel's chance to pass Muller to some extent and the Chevrolet driver managed to keep him behind and win the race with only 0.511 seconds gap.

As for the YOKOHAMA Trophy class, Michel Nykjaer started from the highest grid in the class and stayed in the lead position throughout the race to secure his fourth class victory of the season.

The red flag in Race 1 caused a big delay in the time table and the time to start the second race was also pushed back. For Race 2, the pole position was given to Mehdi Bennani driving a BMW 320 TC, which should have slight theoretical advantage in a standing start, and Nykjaer shared the front row with the Moroccan. Pepe Oriola in the Tuenti Racing Team run SEAT Leon sat on the third grid.

Bennani made a clean start and got through the first corner as the race leader. Gabriele Tarquini in one of the factory Honda Civic rocketed from the fifth grid and gained a few positions. But the Italian hit Oriola in Turn 1 and it caused the Spaniard to fall back to seventh, as he almost lost control of his car in the aftermath of the contact.

The second race of the day provided a lot of fights for positions through the entire field. Probably the best example of them was seen on the pit straight at the end of Lap 3. After passing Thompson on the previous lap and moving up to fourth, Coronel was putting pressure on Tarquini closely from behind. And Robert Huff and Muller, starting from seventh and ninth grids respectively, caught up with them and formed the closely packed five car group.

Then, the four out of the five car pack, from Tarquini to Huff, became abreast of each other on the straightaway! With Muller following just behind them, this group was also the 'showcase' of five participating car models in this year's WTCC.

But, even in the race track build to the latest international class specification, it was simply impossible for as many as four cars to enter the first corner at the same time. So, in the beginning of Lap 4, the battle for third between Tarquini, Coronel and Thompson ended up with a collision and the Lada driver on the outside was thrown out of the track. The Briton had to end his race on the spot but the Russian spectators cheered him for his fighting spirit.

From Lap 4 to 7, the race leaders Bennani and Nykjaer swapped their positions for a few times and the Dane became the new leader after the hotly fought battle. But the fact that Nykjaer couldn't save tires during these laps might have had an impact on his race in the closing stage...

On the other hand, the veteran Muller never forgot about tire management. That was the reason why he didn't join the four way battle on Lap 3 and just followed them closely. And his clever tire saving surely paid off in the second half of the race.

In the wake of the incident between Coronel and Thompson, Muller was already running in fourth and caught up with Huff and Bennani on Lap 9 of the 13 lap race. Then the reigning champion made a move on the BMW driver at Turn 15, the last corner before the pit straight. But the Briton run wide there and this allowed Muller to pass two cars at one time to move up to second.

Now only Nykjaer was running in front of Muller. At the end of Lap 11, the gap between them was reduced to 1.062 seconds and only two laps to go. The Dane seemed to be struggling with slight tire degradation and the gap became smaller and smaller lap by lap but the time was running out for the pursuing Frenchman.

And Nykjaer knew how to keep his cool under pressure because he had already scored two overall victories in Morocco and Austria, so the YOKOHAMA Trophy contender could add one more overall win on his tally here in Russia.

This was the first ever Russian round of WTCC. The track layout of Moscow Raceway allows the battles of the cars in many places, so the spectators could fully enjoy the interesting fights between different car models that have different characteristics, which is one of the strong points of WTCC.

As the track surfaces were less than a year old, they weren't so abrasive for tires in general. The temperature differences between left hand side and right hand side tires were relatively small and this meant that the track wasn't hard on tires. However, because there were the fierce battles almost everywhere on the track, the tire management by the drivers during the races was still important. Yvan Muller proved it in Race 2 and his clever usage of the Yokohama tire's inherent performance almost led to the victory from behind in the Chevrolet drivers duel.