Two new winners, a rare occurrence

  • gb
10.04.13
By sharing race victories last Sunday in Marrakech, Michel Nykjær and Pepe Oriola became the 26th and 27th winners in WTCC history.

Nykjær is the first Dane victorious in the World Championship, while Oriola is the fourth Spaniard, following Jordi Gené, Félix Porteiro and Sérgio Hernández.

The last driver to be inducted into the winners’ club was Stefano D’Aste who won in Austria and Japan last year. The last season in which the WTCC celebrated two new winners was 2009: Colin Turkington in Japan and Norbert Michelisz at Macau.
 
However, the rarest occurrence was to see Nykjær and Oriola claiming their first win on the same race weekend.
This had previously happened only five times, four of them during the championship’s maiden season in 2005. The fifth and last time a WTCC event had crowned two new winners dated back to 2006, when Yvan Muller and Alain Menu shared victories at Brands Hatch.