01.08.2003 (lil), Press release Team Coloni, Formula 3000

German Grand Prix – Qualifying

Hockenheim (D) – August 1st ’03

Coloni Motorsport dominated the qualifying of the F.I.A. F.3000 German Grand Prix: Brazilian Ricardo Sperafico set an excellent time of 1.29.829 and earned a pole position never endangered during the 40 minutes session.

Ricardo Sperafico conquered the second pole of 2003, after the one taken in the Austrian GP, where Sperafico had won a race led from lights to flag. The Brazilian of Coloni will start so in first position in grid, ahead of Tonio Liuzzi of Red Bull Junior Team, squad technically supported by Coloni Motorsport.

For Zsolt Baumgartner this will be a memorable Friday: on the day of his Formula 1 debut, the Hungarian was the best “rookie” in the F1 morning test, doing a very good job for JordanF1, appreciated by the whole English team. In F.3000 Zsolt got a good result in qualifying, taking a place in the top ten (9th), a promising result in order to earn points in race.

Coloni Motorsport is very satisfied with the job done by the team and his drivers and is very confident for Saturday race: the 2002 race in fact was marked by the pole position and the victory taken by the Italian squad, while the fastest lap was set by Ricardo Sperafico, now Coloni driver.

Ricardo Sperafico 1°, 1.29.829: “Starting from the free practice, Coloni’s single-seater was very competitive, she was going very well: I was able to exploit my new set of tyres and so I took the pole. For tomorrow I’m calm and confident, I really like the track and the car is going very well, so I think I will confirm tomorrow what we did today”.

Paolo Coloni, Team Principal: “We are very pleased with the results achieved, especially with the promising pole taken by Sperafico, who repeated what done in Austria. We saw that –both with Ricardo and Zsolt- the car with race setup is well balanced. We are also proud to have seen the F1 debut of our driver Zsolt Baumgartner, who did an excellent job, like with Coloni Motorsport in F.3000”.

Hockenheim – eight round of the Championship – www.hockenheimring.de
(Local Times, GMT +1)

Saturday August 2nd – h. 16.00 Race (Eurosport, Sunday August 3rd h. 09.00 AM)