SEAT Sport team opened the 2008 FIA WTCC with a double victory at Curitiba, in front of a crowd of 45,000.
The León TDI cars won both races: in the first one pole sitter Yvan Muller crossed the line first followed by his team-mate Rickard Rydell, while Gabriele Tarquini - on his 46th birthday - resisted the charge of BMW''s reigning champion Andy Priaulx in the second race.
As a consequence of these results, Muller and Tarquini are equal with 14 points on top of the Drivers'' Championship, while in the Manufacturers'' Championship SEAT lead by 8 ahead of BMW.
BMW drivers Priaulx, Jörg Müller, Augusto Farfus and Félix Porteiro made life tough for their fellow SEAT competitors and collected three podium results: Müller third in Race 1 (after Farfus'' exclusion for a technical infringement), Priaulx and Porteiro second and third respectively in Race 2.
Chevrolet suffered a nightmare weekend. Alain Menu''s dramatic shunt in qualifying - from which he escaped unharmed - seemed to be an omen and all three Chevrolet men (Robert Huff, Nicola Larini and Menu) were eliminated in collisions during the first race. The second race was not much better: only Larini made it to the end, but out of the points.
In the Independents'' Trophy, Olivier Tielemans scored two victories on his first appearance in the Wiechers-Sport BMW.