Grant Riddall once again thrust his car onto pole by an impressive margin at Monza, however with the slipstreaming nature of the track, another pair of wins was far from definite.
Riddall led from the green but by lap 2 was down to fifth as his slipstream allowed 4 drivers to get past him, but almost as quickly he was into second. Jef and Rouke got together and last a lot of time allowing the champioship leader to retake second.
Other collisions early on had caused other drivers to be delayed as the tight, close, racing caused frayed nerves and requires intense concentration. Ralph and Mitch were the big losers as they fell towards the tail of the field after incidents while Mark Abbott failed to so much as take the start.
While Grant was battling his way towards the lead again, Jos Swarthoff was sything through the field. By Lap 3 he had made up 10 places to fifth and found himself in close company with John Wallace.
Kenyon and Fulvio were two more drivers who faded after a good start while by Lap 4 Grant was back in the lead.
He held on for a solid win just over a second ahead of Fernando and Bret Metcalf.
The Sprint had proved to be short and sharp, but the feature was likely to be an epic race with 22 laps of drafting on the menu.
Grant soon found himself in a battle with Fernando from the start while Ronny made a demon start. Elsewhere Bret and John Wallace seemed to be playing musical cars as a hugely eratic driver by Benoit seemed to make both drivers go out of their way to be close to him.
Benoit made their life hard for 3 laps before he crashed out while John would retire with technical failure a few laps later.
That left the consistant Bret with a battle on his hands with Paul Langford and... a recovering Grant Riddall. Riddall had been forced to pit on lap 4 after an incident, dropping him to 14th but a solid display of drafting soon brought him up to Bret.
Several cars had other incidents but by half distance only 4 drivers had retired, with two more pulling out a couple of laps later. That left 14 drivers battling their way round at speeds in excess of 200mph.
Up Front Jef was looking secure until he lost a couple of places on lap 13 as 4 cars battled hard to dominate the race in a pack that steadily pulled away from the Bret/Riddall battle.
Jef retook the lead but Ralph wouldn't let him rest, the pair frequently swapping places as they pulled away into an intense battle. Jef eventually pulled up an impressive win narrowly from Ralph with Fernando pulling out a solid 3rd place.
Overall Monza proved to be a very different challenge which saw drivers having to co-operate to get the best out of it. Some drivers proved better at this than others and this contributed to the excitement.
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