Italian motorsport fans flocked last weekend at Imola for the re-opening of the Autodromo Enzo and Dino Ferrari, and the FIA WTCC drivers repaid them with two action-packed races.

37,000 people attended the events, the largest crowd ever seen at Imola for a motorsport meeting other than Formula One and Superbike WC.

The WTCC show did not disappoint them. SEAT Sport Yvan Muller and Rickard Rydell finished one two in the first race, while James Thompson's Honda Accord was charging up to the third position. In the second race Thompson claimed an historical victory, the first in the championship for a Japanese manufacturer, beating BMW's Jörg Müller and Chevrolet's Robert Huff.

These results enabled Yvan Muller to stretch his lead in the Drivers' Championship to 12 points ahead of his team mate Gabriele Tarquini, who was hospitalized after a crash at the start of the second race. Rickard Rydell lies in third with an 18-point gap, while Huff, the first non-SEAT driver in the classification, is one further point adrift.

Andy Priaulx remains the best of the BMW men; however he slipped down from third to fifth with a gap of 25 points, three more than his fellow driver Jörg Müller and five ahead of Félix Porteiro.

SEAT maintain a solid margin of 34 points in the Manufacturers' Championship, ahead of BMW.

The championship will stay in Italy for rounds 19 and 20 that will be held at Monza on October 5th, a meeting that will mark the end of the European season before the travelling to the Far East, to Japan and Macau.