FIA F3000 Championship Round Five - Monaco 

The twisting streets of Monte Carlo hosted the latest round of the FIA F3000 Championship.  After the teams historic 1-2 in Austria, Tomas Enge and Bjorn Wirdheim experienced a mixed weekend with Tomas finishing third and Bjorn retiring with a technical problem. 

With overtaking extremely limited around the narrow streets, a good qualifying time is critical at this event.  Initially third in the first session, Tomas looked set to improve his time in the second until his gearbox failed 10 minutes into the session eventually dropping him to 7^th.  Bjorn on his first visit to the Principality, again continued his impressive debut season, steadily improving through the sessions to reach 6^th place just ahead of his team mate. 

The start of the race got underway without incident with the top 8 all holding their positions.  By lap three, Bjorn was visibly struggling with his car and had Tomas glued to his gearbox until lap 6 when the young Swede pitted with a suspected steering column problem.  Now in clear air, Tomas rapidly closed on the cars ahead, setting a new lap record in the process.  Benefiting from Saelens gearbox failure and Rodrigo Sperafico's retirement, the Arden driver moved into 4^th position.  This would soon become third after Toccacelo crashed at Ste. Devote, a position which he held until the end of the race behind Sebastien Bourdais and Patrick Friesacher. 

This result places Tomas 3 points behind Bourdais in the Drivers' Championship but retains Arden the lead in the Teams' Championship 5 points ahead of Super Nova. 

Tomas Enge commented "Monaco has never been a good circuit for me and after the gearbox problem in qualifying I was extremely disappointed to be only 7^th on the grid as I knew the car had the potential to go a lot quicker.  I never thought it would be possible to get on the podium from my starting position but I pushed really hard and benefited from other drivers mistakes and realiability problems.  We knew Sebastien was to be strong here but I'm really looking forward to the next few events." 

Bjorn Wirdheim commented "I enjoy driving on street tracks and Monaco certainly lived up to my expectations.  I was pleased with my performance in qualifying and had it not been for traffic on my last set of tyres, I am certain I could have qualified in the top 3.  My start was OK but by the second lap there was something very wrong with the steering of the car, especially through the tunnel.  It was very disappointing to retire from this race as I am sure I could have scored a lot of points. 

Christian Horner commented "I am very pleased with both drivers performance this weekend.  Bjorn, in particular, did a great job in qualifying considering it was his first time at this circuit.  The mechanical failures however, were very disappointing and I hope that the gearbox reliability problems will soon be sorted by Lola.  Tomas drove an aggressive race only brushing the barrier a couple of times and did extremely well to finish third." 

Drivers' Championship 

Teams' Championship