Round 14 - Spain (Barcelona)

ACE SERIES

1995/96 Pole Position:	1:11.350 (Hans Gunnar Hansen)
1995/96 Race Time:	wet - 1h42m30.483 (Michal Janak)
Race Distance:	65 laps

Qualifying

Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Points
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

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	Gap	Points
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

Pos	Car	Driver	Fastest Lap		LL/TL	Pitstops		Avg. Grip	Tyre Usage
Pos	Car	Driver	Time	Lap #	LL/TL	Stops	Avg. Length	Avg. Grip	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: Monday 14 July 1997 - 17:44