F3 History

It was 12 cars for the latest round of the Forward Trust Championship and it was Alex Ribeiro who had racked up hundreds of miles of testing at Snetterton who took pole position.

As the cars lined up on the grid front row man Brian Henton was missing, his engine had cut out on the warm up lap and his starter then failed stranding his car out on the track. Ribeiro went into an immediate lead from the start chased by Buzz Buzaglo in second but by the end of the lap Pedro Passadore who had had his practice hampered by the loss of fifth gear had moved his GRD up to second. Buzaglo found himself back in third with Jose Chateaubriand in fourth ahead of Tony Rouff who had suffered carburettor problems in practice. These leading five were having quite a close battle until lap 4 when Passadore retired with tyre problems and Tony Rouff had made a great overtaking manoeuvre to take second.
Buzaglo found his car beginning to cut out and it finally stopped for good at Coram allowing Chateaubriand up to third. Next came the battling pair of Nick von Preussen and Indonesian Hany Wiano in the second Ippokampos March, Wiano was desperately trying to pass von Preussen and on the last lap he got it all wrong at Russell and hit the pit Armco slightly damaging the car. Luis Moraes (brother of Marcos) moved his Team Brasil GRD up to fifth ahead of Peter Dugdale’s March. Tony Rouff began making inroads into Ribeiro’s lead over the closing laps but there weren’t enough laps left and Ribeiro took his first win of the season.