Pizzonia puts Petrobras on podium.

An exciting race with both Petrobras Junior Team drivers finishing in the points bought to a close the 2002 Formula 3000 International Championship today at Monza.

Antonio Pizzonia starting fifth on the grid made a good start and moved up to fourth position and then passed Toccacelo on the second lap to go third. He had a lot of pressure from Tomas Enge in fourth from mid race to the end but when the safety car was deployed and returned to the pitlane with one lap remaining Antonio made a fantastic manoeuvre to overtake Pantano and move up into second behind race winner Bjorn Wirdheim.

Ricardo Sperafico also had a good start getting up to fifth by the end of lap two but at the end of lap eleven he had to serve a drive through penalty as he was alleged to have caused a collision at the start.

This dropped him down to sixteenth but he drove a great race and managed to get back up to fifth by the end of the 26 laps.

Today's results mean that Antonio finishes fifth and Ricardo equal sixth in the Drivers' Championship.

Tomas Enge wins the title, three points ahead of
Sebastien Bourdais who failed to finish today.

Antonio Pizzonia was happy at least to finish his season with a position on the podium: "We all wanted to finish the Championship with a win but it didn't happen but second place is still good starting from fifth. We tried this different rear wing set-up which we tried here at Monza during the test but unfortunately with lots of fuel in the car it didn't work as well as we were expecting."

"The car was quite difficult to drive because of the rear wing but it was good in the straights," he said "I would like to thank all the team for their efforts, it hasn't been the championship we were expecting this year but we have all worked really hard at making the car better and it is good to finish in second place."

Ricardo Sperafico didn't have such a good time of it:
"For the last race we tried a different set-up with the wings to see if the car can compete and make sure of a good result. Unfortunately I got a penalty and the race was finished for me here so I just tried to finish back in the points."

Team Manager Paul Jackson gave his round up on the round-off to the season: "A satisfying if not ultimate rewarding end to a difficult season for the Petrobras Junior Team. A bold gamble on set-up used by both drivers lead Antonio Pizzonia to his best result of the season and despite yet another drive through penalty for on-track conflict, Ricardo Sperafico bought the second Petrobras Lola home in fifth position."