Zandvoort, August 11th. Fabio Carbone took a start-to-finish win in today's Marlboro Masters of Formula 3 in front of 60,000 spectators at Zandvoort.
The Brazilian backed up his mastery of the Dutch circuit from qualifying to take the honours in flying style in his Fortec Motorsport Dallara-Renault.

Carbone, who had never won an F3 race before, made the best start and rocketed away over the first lap. Then, once his closest challenger Tristan Gommendy had made a mistake, Carbone was left to maintain a 1.6-second
advantage to the finish.
"This is a perfect place to win my first race in F3," said Carbone. "I've been close to winning before, but finally it's happened at last. I tried three starts on the warm-up lap, so I was in good shape and just did a
great one. I tried to go flat-out all the time, but the others were really fast and I was worried they would catch me in the middle of the race."

Gommendy had jumped ahead of his ASM Dallara-Renault team-mate Olivier Pla, who started from the front row, at the green lights. But his mistake dropped him to fourth behind Pla and Carbone's team-mate, Finn Heikki Kovalainen.
Gommendy charged back and passed Kovalainen for third, and then put Pla under pressure for the rest of the race. But, with the driver ahead being his team-mate, he didn't want to risk any ambitious passing manoeuvres on his fellow Frenchman.
"If Olivier had been a driver from another team I would have tried," said Gommendy, "but I must not crash with another ASM car! I'm disappointed, because I could have passed Carbone without the mistake, but happy to get a good result."

Dane Ronnie Bremer was fifth throughout the race in his Manor Motorsport Dallara-Mugen Honda, while Bruno Besson and British championship leader Robbie Kerr both passed Vitantonio Liuzzi to finish sixth and seventh respectively.

Bruce Jouanny set fastest lap on his way through from 20th on the grid to ninth, while James Courtney completed the top 10. Both drivers moved up when Frank Diefenbacher and Kousuke Matsuura collided at Tarzanbocht.

Dutch hopes disappeared almost before the race began. Stefan de Groot (seventh on the grid) ran into the back of Robert Doornbos (sixth) on the green-flag lap, forcing Doornbos out and ensuring that de Groot would have
to start from the pit-lane with a new nose. The best Dutch finisher was therefore Jeroen Bleekemolen, who took 12th.

Results at: www.cpz.nl

Official press relaese Circuit Zandvoort
bu, 11.08.02