The Japanese round of the 2013 FIA World Touring Car Championship was held at Suzuka Circuit, Mie Prefecture, on September 21-22. The championship visited the country for the sixth straight year since 2008 but this was the third time to have races at the home of the F1 Japanese Grand Prix. However, WTCC has been using the 2,243m East short course layout of the track, instead of the Grand Prix layout.

Honda, the de facto owner of the track, had secured the manufacturers' championship title in the previous round in U.S., so this was a triumphant return home for the Japanese marque. As for the drivers' championship, the RML Chevrolet's ace Yvan Muller was on the verge of winning the title when he was heading to this round.

Almost all drivers say that it is extremely difficult to overtake on this East short course version of Suzuka, comparing to the other WTCC venues around the world. This means the qualifying result heavily influences the race results. So everybody was eyeing the best performance on Saturday afternoon by fine tuning the car set up and studying the track thoroughly from the start of the test session on Friday.

Muller clocked 54”081 in this session and became the fastest driver of the day. Another Chevrolet driver, Pepe Oriola, followed with 54”103 and ten other drivers set their best times within just 0.5 seconds from the session leader. So the race weekend began with the prediction that competition in every session would be very close.

In retrospect, the whole weekend was favored by fine weather. And, as the date for the meeting was four weeks earlier than last year, the temperatures were generally higher and, for example, the air temperature at the time of Q1 on Saturday was 28 degrees Celsius which was seven degrees higher than that of the same point in last years’ time table. The difference seemed to have no small effect on the performance of the WTCC cars' turbo charged engines and, as a result, the lap times were slightly slower than those of last year's event.

From the 29 competitors that participated in Q1, the 12 fastest drivers, led by Muller again, were allowed to run in the ten minute Q2 session. The top 12 drivers fought hard to get better starting grids, so the exchange of all out qualifying attacks, that were the display of the highest level driving skill from the world class drivers, were the most exciting things to watch. But, surprisingly, the two pole position favorites, Muller and Gabriele Tarquini, made costly mistakes in their final attacks in the last minutes, so a dark horse in another Honda, Norbert Michelisz, took the pole position for Race 1.

Under the clear sky, and with the traditional Japanese Shamisen (a three stringed banjo) music in the background, the starting procedures for Race 1 began at ten past 2 p.m. on Sunday. Michelisz sat on the front end of the field with his orange and black liveried Honda Civic.

The formation lap got underway 20 minutes later, and after a short rolling lap on the only 2,243m track, the field came back to the pit straight and Race 1 started. Michelisz made a good getaway and was the first to turn into the first corner but the fights for positions behind him were fierce. Although Muller, stating from the fourth grid, passed his teammate Tom Chilton from the outside, Tiago Monteiro from the fifth grid got even better acceleration and got ahead of the RML Chevrolet drivers. Then the Portuguese made an attack on Alex MacDowall's Chevrolet running in second but he might have been a little too optimistic. The Honda driver ended up with going off the track and dropped to the eighth.

Meanwhile, Michelisz was gradually pulling away from the rest of the field. In sharp contrast, however, another Civic driver, Tarquini, was struggling and was pushed hard by the two Chevrolets of Oriola and James Nash. On Lap 4, the Italian was nearly passed by Oriola and Nash from both sides of his Civic at the same time. And this move resulted in the position change between the two Chevrolet drivers and now Nash was in charge of attacking Tarquini.

At the end of Lap 13, the halfway point of the 26 lap race, the gap between the race leading Michelisz and MacDowall was 3.486 seconds. Muller was running in third, 0.549 seconds behind the Briton. The middle phase of the race was rather quiet but it was the calm before the storm. It soon proved that WTCC wasn't known as “martial arts on the race track” for nothing...

On Lap 18, the recovering Monteiro caught the tail of Oriola who was running in seventh. The ex-Grand Prix driver put the pressure on the young Spaniard very hard and tried to squeeze his car into the inside of Oriola at almost every corner. At Turn 8, Monteiro's attempt looked to be successful but Oriola just closed the door, so the Portuguese had nowhere to go and hit the tire barrier that was there to prevent cutting the corner. As a result of this incident, Monteiro had to end his race in the pit and Oriola was penalized for imprudently causing the collision.

Keeping away from the battles behind, Michelisz remained in the top slot throughout the race, after starting from the pole position, and won it. The Civic driver expressed his joy by kissing Honda's “H” embrem on his car before going up to the podium to celebrate the victory at the Japanese manufacturer's home track.

By finishing in third, Muller secured his fourth WTCC drivers' title. The second place finisher, MacDowall, claimed his fourth victory of the season in the YOKOHAMA Trophy class. Takuya Izawa who drove the third factory Civic finished the race in 12th and was the highest placed Japanese driver in this race.

Race 2, the 20th race of the championship, was the 200th WTCC race since the world championship had been founded. As the top ten Q2 qualifiers were placed on the grids for Race 2 in reversed order, Mehdi Bennani from Morocco sat on the pole position alongside with Tom Coronel who had　 exceptionally good records in the past Japanese rounds. The two front row starters drove the same BMW 320 TCs.

The second race of the day began after the usual standing start procedures. When the engines revved up and the red signals blacked out, the whole field was rushing into the first corner. But, before reaching the corner, Muller who started the race from the seventh grid was heavily hit by Michelisz from behind and the Frenchman's Chevrolet Cruze crashed into the concrete wall on the outside. Thus the newly crowned 2013 WTCC champion driver's race ended so prematurely.

As Muller's wrecked car was parked on the left side of the pit straight, diagonal from the pit exit, the marshals started working to remove the car. For this reason, the yellow flags were shown on the first section of the track, which meant no overtaking was allowed at Turn 1. Partly because of this, the early stage of the race went on without any more drama and the leading drivers were thinking about how they should fight for the rest of the race, after the yellow flags were lifted.

The time came at the beginning of Lap 8 and it just fuelled the battles. At the front, Coronel dove into the inside of Bennani at Turn 1 on Lap 10. Desperate to defend the lead position, the Moroccan made a small mistake and ran wide a little but the Dutchman wasn't able to take the chance to get ahead of Bennani.

On the next lap, the situation of the fight for third changed. Monteiro made a successful move on his teammate Tarquini, who was running in third, at S Curves. Having retired from Race 1 not by his own fault, the Portuguese might have even more hunger for good clean racing, even if it was against his factory Honda teammate.

The 26 lap race reached its halfway point. At the end of Lap 13, Bennani was 0.304 seconds ahead of Coronel but the gap was virtually nothing. On Lap 17, the Dutchman, who had been determined to win this 200th race well before the start, finally managed to overtake Bennani from the inside at Turn 1, as the Moroccan slightly ran wide there again. Because of Coronel's heavy pressure from the early stage of the race, the Moroccan had to fight hard to defend his position and already used up his tires at that time.

From then on, Coronel comfortably drove the remaining laps until the 200th checkered flag fell and got ringing applause from the spactators in the grand stand. Bennani finished in second and won the YOKOHAMA Trophy class. The last and third place on the podium was taken by Monteiro.

This was WTCC's sixth visit to Japan and the event was held at the East short course version of Suzuka Circuit for the third straight year. As the date was almost a month earlier than last year, and the weather was good throughout the weekend, the air/surface temperatures were generally higher than those of the last year's event.

This Japanese round was the championship's 100th round and, therefore, Race 2 at Suzuka was the WTCC's 200th race. Yokohama Tire has been the sole tire supplier of this world championship series for eight years since 2006, the second year of WTCC. By supplying reliable tires for the teams and drivers who displayed the hotly fought battles, Yokohama certainly contributed to the success of this event.

Because the supporting Super Taikyu series races, which had a large number of competitors, were run before the WTCC races, a lot of “marbles” were left on the track in some places. But there was no problem with tires in both WTCC races and the Japanese round, which was the home event for Yokohama Tires, ended on a high note again this year.