Wirdheim now held a comfortable lead over Friesacher which the champion elect, now champion, maintained to the finish. That only lasted until lap 18 when Monfardini stopped and dropped out of the points. Wirdheim finally stopped on lap 16 with the pressure off and resumed second behind BCN's Ferdinando Monfardini who had yet to stop. Pantano ground to a halt at the Rettifilo on lap 14, his chances of holding on to second place now dependant on DNFs for Sperafico, now fourth, and Liuzzi in sixth. Friesacher rejoined in fifth, ahead of Sperafico, who did pick up Van Hooydonk. Friesacher stopped on lap 12 from third along with fourth placed Van Hooydonk. Sperafico pitted first from fourth on lap 9 with Liuzzi following, having just passed Toccacelo for seventh. Wirdheim was running away with the lead with the compulsory pit stops approaching. For the well credentialed Bell, it had been that kind of year. The move was optimistic and ended with the American in the wall, but unhurt and the Italian limping to the pits with a corner of the car wrecked. Further back Gianmaria tried to get underneath Bell in the Parabolica. A lap later Wirdheim did his bit for Sperafico and slipped past Pantano to take the lead. He was quickly through Van Hooydonk and started to close on Friesacher. Sperafico had to beat Pantano to claim second in the championship, so fifth was a disastrous start. Within two laps Liuzzi was in the points. Several cars took lines other than on the tarmac, but no-one was penalised and Pantano led the first lap from Wirdheim, back into second, Friesacher, Van Hooydonk, Sperafico, Toccacelo, Bell, Raffaele Gianmaria, Schmidt and Liuzzi, up to tenth already. Pantano got the best of the start to lead the field into the Rettifilo ahead of Friesacher, Wirdheim, van Hooydonk, Sperafico and Toccacelo as cars scattered across the slow chicane. Having creased the car after choosing the wall, the field was down to fourteen before the start. As the field gridded up Hancock dived for the pits only to be presented with a choice of options, hit the pit wall or hit the suddenly braking course car. At the tail of the field was Super Nova's Sam Hancock. The midfield times were very tightly bunched, with two-tenths covering Friesacher through to Tony Schmidt (Team Astromega) in tenth. His post race penalty from the Hungarian event also meant that he would have to win the race to effectively challenge Pantano and Sperafico. In the battle for second in the championship, Pantano had seven tenths on Sperafico, and a whopping 1.5 seconds on Vitantonio Liuzzi (Red Bull Junior) who sat twelfth after an accident shortened his qualifying. Enrico Toccacelo (Super Nova) and Jeff Van Hooydonk (Team Astromega) made it six cars from six teams leaving Townsend Bell the first teammate in seventh. Ricardo Sperafico was next in the first of the Coloni fettled cars while the Red Bull backed car of last start victor Patrick Friesacher was over a second from Wirdheim's pole time. The polesitter was champion elect Wirdheim who recorded a time of 1:38.457 around the Autodromo, two tenths up on the senior combatant for second in the championship, Durango Formula's Giorgio Pantano. There was only a single PSM Racing Superfund ISR Charouz (whew!) Lola-Zytek for Jaroslav Janis, who was chasing a top ten points ranking. The Formula 3000 grid was again short of cars with 15 starting. But Wirdheim refocused attention on himself, by doing what he had done at Imola and at Silverstone before. The interest in the series had refocused on the battle for the podium positions in the championship. Individual series are linked to their corresponding points table after each report.ījorn Wirdheim had long ago won the International Formula 3000 Championship. By Mark Alan Jones and David Wright, AustraliaĪdvice: The points tables for most series covered by Elsewhere In Racing are available here.
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