The FIA World Touring Car Championship visited China for the third time in as many years, having had a five week break after the Japanese round at Suzuka. The championship's first ever Chinese round in 2011 was held at Tianma International Circuit which was a relatively small-scale race track but, since last year, the event has switched to the Formula One Grand Prix venue of the country, Shanghai International Circuit. It is a well known fact that the track layout scheme looks like the Chinese character that represents 'Shang' of Shanghai but, for this time, the 4603m long layout using a short cut was employed.

Having had the test session on Friday, as this was one of the fly-away races, two free practice sessions were held on Saturday in the morning hours. Then, after a lunchtime break, the qualifying session got underway. In Q1, Yvan Muller clocked 1'54”132 which broke the course record set by Alain Menu last year and became the fastest driver. Pepe Oriola, driving the Tuenti Racing Team run Chevrolet Cruze, followed in second and Tiago Monteiro and Robert Huff finished Q1 in third and fourth respectively. The time gap from Muller to Franz Engstler in twelfth ? and the fastest among the BMW drivers ? was just 1.032 seconds.

Thed Bjork in the Polestar Racing run Volvo C30 that made a temporary comeback to the championship also ended Q1 within the top twelve but the Swede wasn't allowed to join Q2 because he wasn't eligible to score championship points. Thus, Q2 was fought by eleven drivers and the seven Chevrolet drivers swept the upper half of the time sheet, being covered by less than a second gap. At the end of the day, Muller secured the pole position by making his last minute attack successfully and he was followed by his teammate Tom Chilton and Oriola.

The weather wasn't very good on Sunday in Shanghai. The warm up session in the morning was run on the dry track but the rain started to fall just a few minutes before the time to start Race 1. This forced the teams and drivers to make difficult calls on which tires to start with and their choices split. The pole sitting Muller, Chilton in second and James Nash in fourth sat on their grids with the slick tires on all four corners. But Alex MacDowall and Huff, who were starting the race from sixth and seventh grids, put the slicks on the front axle and the wet tires on the rear, while Oriola in third and the championship returnee, Rickard Rydell, in seventh chose the wet for both front and rear.

As it turned out, the choice that didn't include the wet tires was the right call because the rain ceased after a few laps from the start. The race organizer decided to use the Safety Car start procedures and the proper racing began from Lap 3. In the beginning, Oriola who had bet on the wet tires was clearly faster and snatched the lead position by easily overtaking Muller and Chilton.

However, the Spaniard's reign didn't last long. As the rain eased off, the amount of water on the track decreased to the extent that the wet tires no longer worked best. Naturally, the RML Chevrolet pair who had the slick tires became faster now and passed Oriola on Lap 7 to regain the team's one two formation.

Then they rapidly pulled away, partly because Oriola blocked the rest of the field, but the Briton didn't cease fire against the senior teammate who had already secured this year's drivers' championship title. The two Chevrolet Cruzes entered the final lap, with Chilton following closely to Muller. And, when they were approaching to the last corner, Chilton took the line that would give him the best possible exit acceleration. This tactic worked and he managed to become abreast on the straightaway just before the finish line. When the checkered flag fell to them, Chilton was just a hundredth ahead of Muller and scored the second victory of the season since his maiden win in the championship in America.

In the YOKOHAMA Trophy class, Nash claimed his fifth win of the year by finishing the race in third overall. Now he seemed to be one step closer to the title.

The weather improved by the time to start Race 2, so all cars sat on the grids with the slick tires. The reversed grid rules gave the pole position to Monteiro and his teammate Gabriele Tarquini was on the second grid. On the second row, another Honda Civic with Norbert Michelisz at the wheel took the fourth grid.

The rear wheel drive cars, i.e. BMW 320 TCs, have a theoretical advantage in the standing start for Race 2, but this time, the leading BMW drivers on the grids was Engstler in lowly eleventh and Tom Coronel in twelfth. Nevertheless, the Dutchman made a great start and moved up to seventh on Lap 5 but he was still too far behind from the leaders.

At the front, Michelisz passed Huff's SEAT Leon on the opening lap and came up to third. This meant the race was led by three Honda Civics immediately after the start. So, many expected close battles by the Honda drivers but Monteiro was firmly determined not to give Tarquini and Michelisz a chance to pass him. For the second half of the ten lap race, the Portuguese managed to keep a gap of about one second against his Italian teammate and received the checkered flag first.

For Monteiro, this was a long-absent taste of victory since he had won the second race in Valencia in 2010 when he was driving for SEAT. Therefore, this was the first time for him to get on the center of the podium after he had moved to the Honda factory team last year.

Tarquini and Michelisz finished the race in second and third, although Huff and Muller, who started the race from the tenth grid, was getting closer from behind in the last few laps. This meant the Honda drivers swept the podium of Race 2 in Shanghai.

Nash won the YOKOHAMA Trophy class again by finishing sixth overall this time. His sixth victory of the season further expanded his championship lead to 41 against MacDowall in third, as Michel Nykjaer in second is very likely to miss the final round in Macau, and put the Briton on the pole position for the title showdown.

This was the second time in as many years to run the WTCC Chinese round in Shanghai International Circuit. But, after the last year's race, a part of the track received repair and resurfacing. In addition, the curbs at the inside of corners were also reworked by rounding off the edges and this was effective to reduce the risk of damaging tires when the cars rode over the curbs.

The track itself isn't so hard on the tires. The tire temperature may rise when the car go through the technical section and the banked corner but the tires are then cooled down on the long straightaway. And there are only a few high speed corners that impose high side force on the tires. However, the track wasn't always kept clean by the course marshals and there were not only a lot of marbles but debris as well left on the track when a session started. Because of this, the drivers were effectively forced to trace the normal racing lines only not to take the risk of damaging tires by the debris.

The weather was inclement on Sunday and that certainly affect how things developed in Race 1. The track wasn't too wet to go with the slick tires yet but it was almost impossible to predict if the weather would get better or worse. As the air/surface temperatures were relatively low at that time, it could have been difficult to keep the slick tires warm enough to obtain a reasonable grip level.

Consequently, the teams' calls on their tire choice split but both of the slick and wet tires performed well in the applicable working ranges of each. As a result, while the drivers who had chosen the wet tires were dominant in the first half of the race, then those who had picked the slicks took over in the second half.