14th July 2002:  FIA European Touring Car Championship, Oschersleben ( Germany ), Rounds 11 & 12

The Alfas had another uncompetitive showing, Nicola Larini bringing his Alfa 156 GTA home in 6th place to claim the final championship point, while Luis Villamil was again best non-works Alfa, following Larini home in 7th place.

With the top six of the grid reversed, Larini started on pole, De Simone next to him. With his DART team unable to fix race one's accident damage in time, Tom Ferrier does not reappear. At the lights De Simone grabs the lead, while Larini manages to keep the Mullers behind him and hang onto second slot. Goivanardi is pushed off at the first corner, rejoining at the tail end of the field. Cayrolle and Sardelli hit each other and retire immediately.

Dirk Muller passes team mate Jorg into third and pressures Larini. On lap 3 he gets past but only for seconds as Larini retakes the position. The next lap Jorg Muller passes his team mate, but Dirk Muller responds, repassing Jorg and Larini to climb up into second. By lap 5 with Larini and Jorg Muller locked together side by side, Rickard Rydell takes advantage, sweeping past the battling pair and up into third. Jorg Muller then also squeezed past Larini, while Dirk Muller with clear space reeled in De Simone to take the lead on lap 6.

The same lap saw a recovering Giovanardi back into the top ten positions, passing Tavano for tenth. Two laps later, while Jorg Muller is harrying Rickard Rydell for third, Marc Gene gets past Larini for fifth place.

Lap 9 saw Jorg Muller pass Rydell, and two laps take second place off De Simone. Lap 12 saw Ruberti and Hanson collide and retire, while one lap later Rydell hit De Simone, pushing him into a spin, allowing him up into a third. Marc Gene took advantage of his team mates misfortune to move into fourth, while De Simone recoved to hang onto fifth place, fending Larini off to the flag.

Championship leader, Fabrizio Giovanardi finishes down in eleventh place, the first time this year he has failed to score points. Three points in total from the two races, brings Giovanardi's drivers championship tally up to 84, while two wins has help Dirk Muller move up to 53 points, only 13 points adrift of second placed Nicola Larini.

Fabrizio Giovanardi, “We had a difficult time yesterday in qualifying but the first race today was good enough for me, despite the clash I had at the start with De Simone which spoilt the balance of my car. Before the second race, the mechanics managed to re-set up the car and from the formation lap, I noticed that the car was even better than in the first race. Unfortunately, while I was fighting for the positions after the start, somebody pushed me off and that was the end of my hopes. Today, it was very hard because this is definitely a BMW track. However, we did our best to get the best out of our cars. You cannot win every time but I am convinced that we were in a position to fight. I lost 17 points of my margin but I am not worried. However, we must be very careful to avoid situations like today when I did not score points in the second race”.

At the lights Ekblom got the jump on Coronel to lead the pack away. As they headed into turn four there was a collision involving Hanson, Ruberti, Tavano and Ferrier. The last two retired immediately, Hanson hobbled back to the pits for repair and Ruberti rejoined after the field had passed. Still on the opening lap, Romana Bernadoni retired her Nordauto Alfa 156 with gearshift failure.

The end of the first lap sees Giovanardi and Larini in 8th and 9th place, locked in a battle for 6th with the BMWs of De Simone and Gene. On lap 6 Jorg Muller hit poleman Tom Coronel in the fight for sixth, the Dutchman heading to the pits for repairs, while Giovanardi passed Gene and into fifth place. Two laps later Larini is past De Simone and into seventh, while Paolo Ruberti heads to the pits for repairs after a clash with the Bigazzi Alfa of Eric Cayrolle.

Lap 9 sees Giovanardi move up from fifth to fourth as Dirk Muller locks up and punts out Fredrik Ekblom. Meanwhile De Simone overtakes Gene and Larini to move into fifth place. Top six positions stayed the same until the end of the race, two laps from home Luis Villamill got past Eric Cayrolle to be the first Alfa privateer over the line.

The only driver to break the 1:34 barrier, Tom Coronel set his pole time six minutes from the end of the session, deposing Frederik Ekblom from the top of the time sheets. Fastest non-BMW was Rickard Rydell in the Prodrive Volvo. After setting the early qualifying pace he was bumped down the order by the BMWs to start on row three.

Well off the pace were the Nordauto Alfa drivers, Giovanardi and Larini being found down on row four, Giovanardi over 8/10ths away from Tom Coronel's fastest time. Eric Cayrolle had a dreadful qualifying session in the Bigazzi Alfa 156, completing only four laps before worsening gearbox problems consigned him to a spectating role. Cayrolle would start from 18th place, one behind series debutant Thomas Klenke, who was also suffering gear selection problems in his brand new Ford Focus.

After the session Giovanardi commented, “It’s perfectly clear that we have not been able to adapt our car to the new rules or to the track. On one hand BMW definitely benefited from the rule changes in terms of weight and engine speed, but on the other hand I don’t want to cry and to put all the blame on this. We have to cope with these new regulations, working on the car to identify and solve the problems we had today. I know we can do it.”

Larini added, “We expected to be handicapped by the new regulations, but we did not expect to be so far behind. We were thinking of a half a second improvement for BMW, but they improved by one second. Now the situation has been turned upside-down, because if before Alfa Romeo’s domination resulted in only Giovanardi and me at the top, now there are four or five BMW drivers in the first positions. And considering that BMW cars take always a better start thanks to the rear-wheel drive, this will have a major influence on the race’s early stages.”