Rob Huff leads Honda 1-2-3 in wet Marrakech main race

Rob Huff led home team-mates Norbert Michelisz and Tiago Monteiro to claim a Honda 1-2-3 in a wet main race in Marrakech. Despite briefly holding third position, briefly, Citroën’s José María López eventually finished fourth in the race behind the Honda trio.

At the start the Hondas held their 1-2-3 positions from qualifying, with Huff ahead of Michelisz and Monteiro, but the Portuguese driver was overtaken by José María López on the first lap for third. ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel was up in fifth early on, but an incident before the hairpin shook the order up, with Volvo’s Thed Björk also losing ground. As a result the Citroën of Yvan Muller was now fifth ahead of Lada’s Hugo Valente, with Sébastien Loeb Racing’s Mehdi Bennani in seventh after a very good start ahead of the Lada of Gabriele Tarquini, while Tom Coronel and the other SLR Citroën of Tom Chilton completed the top ten.

On the following lap, the Münnich Chevrolet of James Thompson jumped up to tenth and started attacking Coronel, starting an entertaining and close battle, while Tarquini also overtook Bennani. Up front, there was minor contact between López and Monteiro as the two battled it out for third, but the Citroën driver went wide at the hairpin and the Portuguese was back through.

Contact between Lada team-mates Tarquini and Valente outside Turn 1 allowed the Italian through on lap seven, soon after that Michelisz made a mistake at Turn 5, with Monteiro behind him not able to exploit his team-mate’s error. From then on the top four ran together, but there were no further attacks.

More drama came when Coronel went wide and had a slide at Turn 5, meaning Thompson sneaked through, soon imitated by Chilton. Towards the end of the race Thompson was on a roll and got very close to Bennani, but was not able to try for a passing move before the race was over.

Rob Huff won ahead of Norbert Michelisz and Tiago Monteiro, claiming his first non-reversed grid win since Austria in 2012. José María López finished fourth, meaning the Argentinian’s lead was reduced to Monteiro by three points to 14.

Yvan Muller finished fifth for Citroën ahead of Lada team-mates Tarquini and Valente. Mehdi Bennani won the Independents’ trophy with eighth outright, while a spectacular race earned James Thompson his first points in the 2016 season at the wheel of the Münnich Motorsport Chevrolet with ninth, with Tom Chilton completing the top ten for Sébastien Loeb Racing.