Round two of the FIA F3000 Championship took place at Imola over the weekend.  In contrast to the Brazilian sunshine, rain was never too far away during both qualifying and the race. 

Qualifying took place on Friday on a damp track which looked to be drying as the rain held off.  Arden drivers Tomas Enge and Bjorn Wirdheim were initially 1^st and 3^rd in the session before dropping back as the wet tyres started to overheat.  Tomas pitted with 20 minutes to go and opted to run slick tyres for the remainder of the session in order to generate some tyre temperature.  

The same strategy was adopted on Bjorn's car which initially looked like the right choice.  Unfortunately, a light shower in the final 10 minutes prevented either driver from improving their times.  Tomas was further hampered by the loss of 3^rd gear on the still fragile Lola gearbox but managed to get within 2 seconds of his previous best time on wet tyres albeit leaving him in 12^th and Bjorn in 17^th place. 

Both drivers started the second session on wets and despite being 1^st and 3^rd in the session only managed to improve their grid positions to 7^th  (Tomas) and 11^th (Bjorn) due to a further rain shower that precluded any quicker times being set. 

The race took place in dry conditions immediately after F1 qualifying with the threat of rain never too far away.  Both drivers made reasonable starts with Tomas managing to move into 5^th position by the end of the first lap.  Bjorn again demonstrated his considerable race craft moving quickly through the field to 7^th position.  By lap 18 Tomas was coming under increasing pressure from Patrick Friesacher (Red Bull) after having badly flat spotted his front right tyre in the early laps.  A small mistake at Acque Minerali allowed the Red Bull car to move ahead.  Bjorn, now one of the quickest cars on the circuit was running at the same pace as the leaders and quickly reduced the 8 second gap between him and his team mate down to 1 second with 4 laps to go before a slight mistake saw him drop back.  With two laps remaining, rain threatened to interrupt the race but just held off leaving the Arden drivers in 6^th and 7^th positions. 

Tomas Enge commented "I was pretty happy with the car during qualifying in the wet although the wet tyres were not lasting too long in these conditions.  The circuit felt ready for slicks and we decided to change early in order to try and develop some tyre temperature for the last few laps.  This looked to be working OK until a brief rain shower and my sudden loss of third gear.  Starting from 7^th on the grid the race was always going to be difficult.  I made a good start then found myself boxed in and unfortunately badly flat spotted my front tyre which gave me a big problem for the rest of the race with a bad vibration and a lot of understeer but at least I managed to salvage a point out of it.  

Bjorn Wirdheim commented "The car was initially pretty good in qualifying and developed more and more over steer as the rear tyres deteriorated.  After changing to slicks and another small shower it became impossible to improve my time.  I was happy with the balance of the car in the second session and was a little frustrated to only line up 11^th despite being 3^rd in the second session.  I made a much better start than Brazil! however from the  middle of the grid it was quite difficult to make up places.  As in Brazil, I was able to run close to the cars in front and work my way up the field although this time I did not manage to get any points out of it". 

Christian Horner commented "Qualifying obviously hampered our chances of a good result here.  We took a gamble to run slicks in the first session which at the time looked like the right thing to do only for there to be a further shower.  Tomas probably would have gone quicker on the slicks had it not been for the problem with his gearbox which continues to be a weak area on the car.  Both drivers had reasonable starts and it was a shame Tomas flat spotted his tyre which obviously made life difficult for him.  Bjorn's performance in the race was again exemplary disproving the theory that it is impossible to overtake in F3000".