Norbert Michelisz led Honda team-mates Tiago Monteiro and Rob Huff to a time of 8m47.920s to bag Honda 10 Manufacturers’ championship points following its narrow defeat of Citroën.

Citroën, with Yvan Muller guiding José María López and nominated third driver Mehdi Bennani, would fall 1.564 seconds short after a close battle around the lap, handing Honda its second outright win of the year in the Tour de France-inspired team time trial competition. “The cars are very close so it’s a good result,” said Honda team head Alessandro Mariani. “We thought before we could push each other on the long straight, but on the previous part of the circuit it’s not easy to stay close to the car in front, so we joined the cars before the last straight, which we did, and it was a good strategy and a good job. The guys did a good job and we took the opportunity.”

Uniquely, WTCC MAC3 was run over one lap of the 25.278-kilometre Nürburgring Nordschleife rather than the usual two, which put even more pressure on the drivers not to make a mistake by cracking under pressure.

LADA was unable to take part in WTCC MAC3 after one of its three cars, that of Hugo Valente, was damaged in an accident in the preceding qualifying session.