Round 3 - San Marino (Imola)

ACE SERIES

1995/96 Pole Position:	1:15.763 (Rene Smit)
1995/96 Race Time:	1h24m53.765 (Pedro Celli)
Race Distance:	61 laps

Qualifying

Championship leader Oliver Roberts defended his position against Reinhold Schatzer and was able to put 12 additional points between himself and his by now strongest rival. With Derek Waters and Martin Devine, Imola sees two drivers score their first qualifying points of the season.

Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Points
1.	Oliver Roberts	Digitech	1:15.966		20
2.	Juha Hyvonen	FORT-Jiuqi	1:16.263	+0.297	16
3.	Alan Strang	Team Ecosse	1:16.311	+0.345	14
4.	Derek Waters	Maverick	1:16.470	+0.504	12
5.	Hans Gunnar Hansen	FORT-Jiuqi	1:16.661	+0.695	10
6.	Reinhold Schatzer	RST Racing	1:16.762	+0.796	8
7.	Robert Schaftlein	Digitech	1:16.820	+0.854	6
8.	Michal Janak	MAGIA-Crysler	1:16.873	+0.907	5
9.	Martin Devine	Enigma Racing	1:16.876	+0.910	4
10.	Markus Kruggel	Wild 13	1:17.223	+1.257	3
11.	Jan Svehlik	Bolgani	1:17.270	+1.304	2
12.	Stephen Orr	Ant Hill Mob Racing	1:17.293	+1.327	1
13.	Alex Boshuizen	Revelations	1:17.590	+1.634
14.	Ignacio Garcia	IGC Racing Team	1:17.733	+1.767
15.	Axel Bruns	Nameless Horror	1:17.750	+1.784
16.	Steffen Diener	Roadrunner	1:17.973	+2.007
17.	Andrew Clark	Ant Hill Mob Racing	1:18.716	+2.750
18.	Nuno Maltez	Maverick	1:18.921	+2.955
19.	Paul Branney	Team Ecosse	1:19.079	+3.113
20.	Uwe Schuerkamp	Wild 13	1:20.086	+4.120

Race

This race was very near to a commentator's nightmare: The winner in front all the time, winning with a lead of over one minute, most of the other drivers were struggling with the track and even the closest of all finishes, that between Jan Svehlik and Axel Bruns, was caused by a driving error. Grrr. Do it better next time, boys ;-)

Oliver was leading from the start on and did not even loose his lead during the pitstops. His DDD strategy worked well for him as Imola is one of the most tyre friendly circuits. But therefore it proved to be very unfriendly to the drivers. The first to experience this was Juha Hyvonen whose race ended just a few hundred meters after the start. Maverick's Nuno Maltez made it a bit better but his 5 finished laps meant that he would end up at the back of the points, too. The group of early retirerers was completed by Martin Devine from Enigma in lap 16 and Paul Branney in lap 19. All the others saw the checkered flag from the positon of the drivers seat although Uwe Schuerkamp and Andrew Clark were lapped once respectively twice.

The finishers damaged 9 front wings, Markus Kruggel and Derek Waters each killled two of the downforce tools, making their pit strategy useless. The honor to ruin the only rear wings of the race went to Alan Strang and Uwe Schuerkamp.

Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Points
1.	Oliver Roberts	Digitech	1h23m43.681		175
2.	Hans Gunnar Hansen	FORT-Jiuqi	1h24m57.831	+1m14.150	170
3.	Robert Schaftlein	Digitech	1h25m09.186	+1m25.505	165
4.	Michal Janak	MAGIA-Crysler	1h25m23.829	+1m40.148	160
5.	Alex Boshuizen	Revelations	1h25m45.924	+2m02.243	155
6.	Jan Svehlik	Bolgani	1h26m07.257	+2m23.576	151
7.	Axel Bruns	Nameless Horror	1h26m10.683	+2m27.002	147
8.	Reinhold Schatzer	RST Racing	1h26m15.971	+2m32.290	143
9.	Alan Strang	Team Ecosse	1h27m22.523	+3m38.842	139
10.	Markus Kruggel	Wild 13	1h27m39.021	+3m55.340	135
11.	Derek Waters	Maverick	1h28m16.329	+4m25.219	132
12.	Uwe Schuerkamp	Wild 13	-1 Lap		129
13.	Andrew Clark	Ant Hill Mob Racing	-2 Laps		126
14.	Paul Branney	Team Ecosse	18 Laps		123
15.	Martin Devine	Enigma Racing	16 Laps		120
16.	Nuno Maltez	Maverick	5 Laps		117
17.	Juha Hyvonen	FORT-Jiuqi	0 Laps		114

Fastest Race Laps

Pos	Driver	Team	Time
1.	Oliver Roberts	Digitech	1:17.856 LR
2.	Robert Schaftlein	Digitech	1:18.277
3.	Alex Boshuizen	Revelations	1:18.372
4.	Michal Janak	MAGIA-Crysler	1:18.458
5.	Hans Gunnar Hansen	FORT-Jiuqi	1:18.485
6.	Axel Bruns	Nameless Horror	1:18.721
7.	Markus Kruggel	Wild 13	1:19.148
8.	Derek Waters	Maverick	1:19.297
9.	Jan Svehlik	Bolgani	1:19.374
10.	Alan Strang	Team Ecosse	1:20.004
11.	Reinhold Schatzer	RST Racing	1:20.353
12.	Uwe Schuerkamp	Wild 13	1:21.069
13.	Andrew Clark	Ant Hill Mob Racing	1:22.072
14.	Martin Devine	Enigma Racing	1:25.413
15.	Paul Branney	Team Ecosse	1:27.621
16.	Nuno Maltez	Maverick	1:27.164
17.	Juha Hyvonen	FORT-Jiuqi	-:--.---

Some of the driver statements

Oliver Roberts (Digitech): "Strategy worked as planned, although the fact I started on Ds might have been the reason why I got into so much traffic during the early stages of the race. Anyway, I'm very pleased with my time, and I didn't experience any major incidents - so a pretty boring race really ;-)"

Hans Gunnar Hansen (FORT-Jiuqi): "Not my favourite track, but it went a lot better than last year I think. I am afraid however, that many other drivers also did a lot better than last year."

Alan Strang (Team Ecosse): "All in all, it was a fairly disappointing race, especially the last few laps. Still, at least I finished, and that was all I was looking for."

Derek Waters (Maverick): "San Marino is certainly not my favourite circuit. Both the chicanes disagree with my driving style. The profusion of computer car crashes proved to be my undoing, and I had to make three(!) pitstops to repair my wing after crashing into computer cars who were spinning! I crashed into Andrea Montermini twice! (Cue irate lead driver abusing backmarker argument!). Anyway, considering how much I dislike San Marino, I was happy to have actually finished the race."

Andrew Clark (Ant Hill Mob Racing): "Well, at least I finished !!!!! Fairly uneventful race really But, I think Damon Hill was using an unautorised fuel. He shot round the track !!!!"

Martin Devine (Enigma): "Well, I`ve mucked up the race big time (again), but I`m still happy because of the qualifying - I was hoping for a top twelve sometime through the season, but I wasn`t expecting much from Imola. Now the next trick is to finish a race..."

Last modified: Monday 14 July 1997 - 18:02