Inquiries after the
two FIA World Touring Car Championship races at Imola
yesterday resulted in the stewards making several penalising
decisions.
Roberto Colciago will lose ten grid position
for the next race due to his incident with Jordi Gené in Race 1;
Jason Plato received a similar penalty due to his collision with
Alfa Romeo's James Thompson in Race 2.
As for the incident between Alfa Romeo Racing Team pilot
Augusto Farfus, and
BMW's Alex Zanardi in Race 2, the Brazilian youngster will
now lose
ten positions on the grid of the next race, but furthermore
if he is involved in a similar incident during one of the
two following events, he will also be excluded from that
race.
Alessandro Balzan has now been excluded from Round Eight of the FIA
WTCC which took place at Imola yesterday. Post-race scrutineering
discovered his car to be underweight. The decision means
that he loses the ten points he gained by winning the 'Independents'
category and thus he drops from a would-have-been third, to sixth
position in the title bid.
The result means that runner-up
Stefano D’Aste of Proteam Motorsport claims the maximum
points and he now sits in ninth place. Marc Hennerici still holds the lead of the Independent’s
competition despite having a disappointing weekend.
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SEAT's Jason Plato has received at grid position
penalty due to his collision with Alfa Romeo's James Thompson
(above) |
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Race One winner
yesterday, Fabrizio Giovanardi leads his Brazilian
Alfa Romeo Racing Team team-mate Augusto Farfus, who
will now be penalised ten grid places at the next
round for his incident with BMW's Alex Zanardi in
Race Two |
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He has 54
points, 19 ahead of second placed Carl Rosenblad while
Tom Coronel, Valle Mäkelä and Salvatore Tavano all have 27
points a piece.
Fabrizio Giovanardi, the 2001 and 2002
FIA European Touring Car Champion for Alfa Romeo , finally got his FIA WTCC
race-winning account off the mark yesterday with pole
position after qualifying and then victory in the opening race
held at Imola. “In the first race I managed to re-claim the lead by
overtaking García and Priaulx so I got the result I was
hoping for and I am extremely happy about that," commented
the Alfa Romeo touring car veteran after the two races.
"In the
second race I was not as lucky as I was in the first. I
started behind everybody and unfortunately there was a lot
of fighting in front of me so I lost some time. My tyres
were getting worse so I could not push too hard. I was lucky
in the last lap as Zanardi and Farfus went off,” Giovanardi
concluded.
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