HARD WORK REWARDED BY THIRD CONSECUTIVE POINTS FINISH
Alain Menu Scores In Second German Race
What had started as a rather tough weekend for the Chevrolet World Touring Car Championship team had a sort of happy ending when Alain Menu netted a single point in the second of the two Oschersleben races. The Swiss driver used his years of touring car experience to avoid incidents and accidents and ran a competitive second race to eighth. Team mates, Rob Huff and Nicola Larini suffered in the first race, but both made remarkable recoveries to 11th and 12th in the second.
Having qualified quickest Chevrolet, Alain Menu ran a competitive first race to 11th, despite a last-corner incident. “Zanardi made a move on Farfus and forced him to run wide. When Farfus came back on the track, I was already beside him, but he came back more than he should have and took my front left corner off.” Instead of finishing ninth, Menu had to settle for 11th, limping across the finish line. His second race, however, had a much happier end. “I had a good second race,” Menu said. “It was good to be in the fight with the other factory drivers, rather than having to race with the privateers as we often had to do in the beginning of the season.”
Rob Huff ran as high as 16th in the first race, until he got hit from behind. “It was a very difficult first race,” he said. “The car was understeering everywhere and bouncing around a lot after I had been hit. After the race we discovered the rear roll bar was broken as result of the incident, which explained my 23rd position.” In race two, Huff was far more competitive. “I had a good clean start and made up at least six places in the first two corners when other drivers took each other off. The car was much better as well. After this morning’s warm up, we added some toe-in to the rear wheels, and took some out again for the second race. As a result the tyres were very good and consistent throughout the race, with a lot less understeer, allowing me to pick off the cars in front one by one.”
Nicola Larini lost his front splitter in the beginning of the first race, dropping him down the order to 17th at the finish. In the second race, he was right up there with Menu. “It makes a lot of difference to drive with or without a splitter,” he said. “I had a good start and was clever enough to avoid the spinning cars in front of me. The car was very good in the middle part of the race, which was when I tried to pass Alain. But I was on the dirty side of the track and went off, and lost a place. After that the car was not as good as before so I can be happy to finish 11th.”
The next races for the 2005 World Touring car Championship are on 18th September at the Otodrom of Istanbul in Turkey.
