Yvan Muller finished the race in third position, behind the Yokohama Trophy winner Alex MacDowall, and clinched his fourth WTCC title.

The first race at Suzuka was split in three parts: the early laps were full of action with close fights for the point position between several group of cars; halfway through the 26-lap distance drivers adopted a more conservative pace; the in the final laps the battle intensified again with plenty of contacts and overtaking.

And this cost Tarquini and Monteiro the possibility to make Honda’s result even greater.

Key moments

Start – Michelisz sprints to the lead from MacDowall; Monteiro passes Muller for 3^rd

Lap 1 – Monteiro tries to overtake MacDowall on the outside at T1 but drivers wide and drops to 7^th

Lap 3 – Tarquini and Oriola have a close fight for 5^th place

Lap 4 – multiple contacts between Tarquini, Oriola, Nash and Monteiro; Nash overtakes Oriola for 6^th

Lap 5 – Thompson overtakes Coronel for 10^th

Lap 8 – Yoshimoto runs wide at T1 and loses 14^th place to Monje

Lap 9 – Oriola, Monteiro, Huff, Bennani and Basseng battle for 7^th

Lap 12 – O’Young overtakes Kozlovskiy for 18^th

Lap 18 – Monteiro dives inside Oriola at T6, they make contact and Monteiro hits a pile of tyres; Thompson moves up to 6^th

Lap 19 – Tarquini loses 5^th place because of a puncture

Lap 20 – Oriola is given a drive through for the incident with Monteiro

Lap 23 – Huff overtakes Coronel for 7^th

Lap 24 – MacDowall defends second place from Muller and Chilton

Lap 26 – Michelisz wins from MacDowall, Muller is 3^rd and clinches the title