FIA INTERNATIONAL FORMULA 3000 ROUND 6, SILVERSTONE, ENGLAND
Vitantonio Liuzzi scored his fifth win from six races at Silverstone on Saturday in his Arden International Lola B2/50 to extend his already comfortable lead in this years FIA International Formula 3000 Championship.
Giving Banbury based Arden it’s second home victory in as many years ‘Tonio claimed a fine pole position before heading title rival Enrico Toccocelo in to Copse from where he was never headed. Although the Italian appeared to be in control of the entire race he still had to work hard for his 10 points, saying; “ Enrico put the pressure on me in the later stages of the race but I was able to control a reasonable gap,” he said. “ The team did a great job as usual with the pit stop and it is nice to win here at Silverstone, as we are based not far from here.”
Liuzzi eventually won by just over a second from Toccocelo who scored his fourth runners up position of the year in his BCN entered Lola, saying, "I tried very hard to overtake Liuzzi, more after the pit stop because my second set of tyres was better than the first.”
Whilst Toccocelo held a comfortable 2nd, behind there was entertainment all the way as an early race fight between Jose Maria Lopez (CMS Lola), Esteban Guerrieri (BCN Lola) and Patrick Freisacher (Coloni Lola) saw overtaking aplenty with Freisacher overtaking both before homing in on 3rd placed Tomas Enge (Ma-Con Lola) whose fastest qualifying time was disallowed after an on-track incident with Durango’s Yannick Schroeder.
As usual, all of the pit stops were conducted early and all the frontrunners apart from Freisacher had immaculate stops. The Austrian saw all of his early race hard work count for nothing as he lost five places and re-joined behind former team mate Alan Van Der Merwe (Super Nova Lola). From there the F3000 veteran drove a superb race, battling spectacularly with Raffaele Giammaria (AEZ Lola) and Esteban Guerrieri. This pair made contact at the Abbey Chicane on lap 25 and the Spaniard was forced to pit for a new nose, which saw him fall down to 15th place and the last classified finisher. Giammaria was demoted a place during the altercation and lost his place to Freisacher who finished 5th just behind Lopez who was equally impressive on what was his first race at Silverstone, re-claiming 4th place from Guerrieri in an audacious move at the fast Becketts complex.
As in Magny Cours the Ma-Con team had another fruitful weekend with Enge finishing a rather lonely 3rd, setting the fastest lap of the race on lap 15 with a time of 1m38.384s. his team mate Tony Schmidt had a solid race and finished a creditable 7th claiming two points. The final point went to a disappointed Van Der Merwe who commented, “I was expecting a bit more from that today. I was looking forward to doing well here as I know the place. Now I have to look forward to Hockenheim and try and get on the pace there, hopefully we can also do some testing before then.”
The South African’s team mate, Jeffrey Van Hooydonck, spun out of 12th place at Priory on lap 6 after disputing territory with Arden’s Robert Doornbos, who finished 10th.
The day however belonged to Liuzzi who now enjoys a point lead of Toccocelo in the points table. The next race on the schedule is at Hockenheim in two weeks time.
Round 6, July 10, 2004. Silverstone. Lap distance: 5.141km/3.194 miles Race: 30 laps - 154.126km/95.773 miles Pos. No. Driver/Entrant Laps Time Gap Kph Best Lap 1 1 Vitantonio Liuzzi (I)Arden International Ltd 30 0:50:22.548 - 183.579 1:38.492 3 2 14 Enrico Toccacelo (I)BCN Competition 30 0:50:23.636 01.088 - 183.504 1:38.712 13 3 17 Tomas Enge (Cz)Ma-Con Engineering 30 0:50:25.536 02.988 01.900 183.388 1:38.384 15 4 3 Jose Maria Lopez (I)CMS Performance 30 0:50:41.440 18.892 15.904 182.429 1:38.880 14 5 7 Patrick Friesacher (A)Coloni Motorsport 30 0:50:44.317 21.769 02.877 182.257 1:38.708 18 6 18 Raffaele Giammaria (I)AEZ I.E. Engineering 30 0:50:49.450 26.902 05.133 181.950 1:38.882 16 7 16 Tony Schmidt (D)Ma-Con Engineering 30 0:50:58.473 35.925 09.023 181.414 1:38.846 18 8 10 Alan Van de Merwe (GB)Super Nova Racing Ltd 30 0:51:04.878 42.330 06.405 181.034 1:39.976 11 9 19 Ferdinando Monfardini (I)AEZ I.E. Engineering 30 0:51:07.916 45.368 03.038 180.855 1:39.792 17 10 2 Robert Doornbos (MC)Arden International Ltd 30 0:51:09.789 47.241 01.873 180.745 1:39.965 14 11 6 Ernesto Viso (VZ)Durango 30 0:51:10.002 47.454 00.213 180.732 1:39.299 16 12 11 Nico Verdonck (B)Team Astromega 30 0:51:27.362 64.814 17.360 179.716 1:40.302 13 13 4 Mathias Lauda (E)CMS Performance 30 0:51:28.205 65.657 00.843 179.667 1:39.633 17 14 5 Yannick Schroeder (F)Durango 30 0:51:29.802 67.254 01.597 179.574 1:39.334 19 15 15 Esteban Guerrieri (I)BCN Competition 30 0:51:47.748 85.200 17.946 178.537 1:39.391 11 Not Classified - 9 Jeffrey Van Hooydonk (B)Super Nova Racing Ltd 5 0:08:32.912 DNF - 179.679 1:40.775 5 - 12 Olivier Tielemans (NL)Team Astromega 1 0:02:16.465 DNF - 132.851 - - Fastest Lap - 17 Tomas Enge (Cz)Ma-Con Engineering 1:38.384 on lap 15 188.115
