Round 14 - Spain (Barcelona)

Qualifying - The Grid * Race Report * Result
Race Statistics * Driver Statements * Race Descriptions
Mixed Race Log * Action Replays * Semi-Pro Results

* Qualifying - Pole time last season: 1:11.350 (Hans Gunnar Hansen)

Pos  Driver              Team                  Time        Diff.      Pts
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1.  Oliver Roberts      Digitech              1:11.924                20
 2.  Michal Janak        Digitech              1:12.031   +0.107       16
 3.  Hans Gunnar Hansen  FORT-Jiui             1:12.173   +0.249       14
 4.  Alan Strang         Team Ecosse           1:12.292   +0.368       12
 5.  Martin Devine       Enigma Racing         1:12.392   +0.468       10
 6.  Ignacio Garcia      IGC Racing Team       1:12.531   +0.607        8
 7.  Steffen Diener      Roadrunner            1:12.574   +0.650        6
 8.  Markus Kruggel      Wild 13               1:12.682   +0.758        5
 9.  Axel Bruns          Wild 13               1:12.773   +0.849        4
10.  Nuno Maltez         Maverick              1:12.988   +1.064        3
11.  Juha Hyvonen        FORT-Jiuqi            1:13.229   +1.305        2
12.  Derek Waters        Maverick              1:13.473   +1.549        1

13.  Paul Branney        Team Ecosse           1:14.968   +3.048

* Race - 65 Laps - Winning time last season (wet): 1h42m30.483 (Michal Janak)

While the season is coming to an end, the 14th round of the championship was the first appearance for Scott Dryden, driver of the Ultratrack F1 team. He and the other drivers were chasing Markus Kruggel who was in the lead after the start, followed by Oliver Roberts and Axel Bruns. While Axel lost ground after ten laps, Oliver was able to stay a few tenths behind Markus, although the championship leader was only on C compounds while the Wild 13 driver opted for D's. But when Markus came in for his first stop in lap 16, it wasn't Oliver who took the lead but his team mate Michal Janak, who drove a couple of fastest laps and closed the gap to the leading two. Michal continued to drive faster than Oliver and so he went into the pits with a 10 second lead in lap 26. His team mate came in one lap later so that the old gap was reestablished in lap 28. However, Oliver was now on D tyres while Michal pitted for another set of C's, and Oliver reduced the gap a bit.

Markus was still on a save third at this point but his second stop in lap 32 brought him near his team mate Axel and Hans Gunnar Hansen in the FORT-Jiuqi. Those three were battling for over ten laps but after everybody went into the pits between lap 46 and 48, Axel fell back a bit and the remaining podium place was to be decided between Markus and Hans Gunnar.

Lap 46 saw Oliver come into the pits, too. When he joined the race again, he was 25 seconds behind the leader. Michal, however, had to pit in lap 54 for his last set of tyres and this got Oliver on first position. Both Digitech drivers were doing similar lap times in the area of 1:15 and so the gap of 10 seconds didn't change significantly till the end.

Also in the 1:15's were Hans Gunnar on third and Markus on fourth, who were within 1 second between the last 10 laps. In lap 61 Markus managed to pass Hans Gunnar but only to see the back of the FORT-Jiuqi again one lap later. A weak last lap from Markus finally decided the battle for the third podium place and so Oliver, Michal and Hans Gunnar were spraying the champagne like mad another time this season. 

Pos  Driver              Team                  Time        Diff.      Pts
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1.  Oliver Roberts      Digitech              1h25m58.059            175
 2.  Michal Janak        Digitech              1h26m08.154 +0m10.095  170
 3.  Hans Gunnar Hansen  FORT-Jiuqi            1h26m44.984 +0m46.925  165
 4.  Markus Kruggel      Wild 13               1h26m49.666 +0m51.607  160
 5.  Axel Bruns          Wild 13               1h27m05.003 +1m06.944  155
 6.  Steffen Diener      Roadrunner            1h27m10.992 +1m12.933  151
 7.  Ignacio Garcia      IGC Racing Team       1h27m27.771 +1m29.712  147
 8.  Alan Strang         Team Ecosse           1h27m49.165 +1m51.106  143
 9.  Nuno Maltez         Maverick              1h28m02.154 +2m04.095  139
10.  Juha Hyvonen        FORT-Jiuqi            1h28m33.339 +2m35.280  135
11.  Derek Waters        Maverick              1h29m37.951 +3m39.892  132
12.  Andrew Clark        Ant Hill Mob Racing   1h30m03.473 +4m05.414  129
13.  Scott Dryden        Ultratrack F1         1h31m25.365 +5m27.306  126
14.  Paul Branney        Team Ecosse            -1 lap                123
15.  Martin Devine       Enigma Racing          13 laps               120

* Race Statistics

FP Car Driver        Fast_Lap FL LL/TL PS Avg_Pits AG  A  B  C  D  Q  W
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1.  1 O.Roberts     1:14.517 59 14/65  2 0:20.481 93       27 38
 2.  2 M.Janak       1:15.402 64 39/65  2 0:26.110 93       54 11
 3. 10 H.G.Hansen    1:15.218 65  0/65  2 0:21.639 93       27 38
 4.  7 M.Kruggel     1:14.754 63 14/65  3 0:24.331 94          65
 5.  8 A.Bruns       1:15.262 64  0/65  2 0:23.906 93       29 36
 6. 33 S.Diener      1:14.675 65  0/65  3 0:29.094 94          65
 7. 15 I.G.Cuadrado  1:15.155 58  0/65  2 0:33.826 93       22 43
 8.  5 A.Strang      1:14.893 61  0/65  3 0:34.681 93       53 12
 9. 29 N.Maltez      1:15.733 54  0/65  2 0:28.457 93       49 16
10.  9 J.Hyvonen     1:14.928 63  0/65  2 0:41.498 93       55 10
11. 30 D.Waters      1:15.172 64  0/65  3 0:30.611 93       55 10
12. 41 S.Dryden      1:22.292 36  0/65  0          88       65
13. 39 M.Devine      1:21.340 11  0/13  0          93       13

Fastest Lap: 1:14.517 Oliver Roberts (Digitech) LR

The first official dry race ever at Barcelona, not surprisingly, a lap record was driven.

* What the top 3 said about the race

Oliver Roberts (Digitech): "Used virtually the same setup and strategy as I did in the pre-season test race. So, I was a CDD strategy, but this time I decided to pit 3 laps earlier to get onto Ds. Anyway, this seemed to work nicely, and I had a good race. The CCs were a bit slow at times, but they didn't really hold me up too much. That's about it really - pretty boring, and I didn't even see a yellow flag even though 10 of the CCs crashed out!"

Michal Janak (Digitech): "This race I started on C's from pole position. I was happy that this year was this race on dry condition. I made 2 pit stops 1st in 26th lap for fresh C's and 2nd in 54th lap for set of D's. I was surprised that first set of C's was good for 25 laps although I pushed them to maximum. My mechanics does good job too, 2nd pit stop was done under 6s. I drove excelent race (I think). My FL was 1:15.402. (top speed on finish straight about 340 kmh - using slipstreaming)."

Hans Gunnar Hansen (FORT-Jiuqi): "Went for a two pitstop strategy in this race. Started on C compound. Had pitstops on lap 27 and 47 where I opted for D's. They wore quicker than expected, but they weren't undriveable. My big problem was all the slow computer cars. Didn't have any clean laps on the last set of tyres, so therefore I couldn't come up with any really fast race laps. Think I lost quiet a lot of time because of this."


Last modified: Sat May 10 00:46:01 1997