With the gaggle of cars swapping positions constantly and creating several heart-stopping moments as they pulled alongside one another at three or four cars abreast, the inevitable finally happened when Gene, who had already lost his bumper courtesy of a nudge from Morbidelli, came together with Tavano, the duo retiring on the spot and ending their hopes of expanding their points tally.
It was a collision that allowed Terting to scamper away to relative safety, leaving Alfa Romeo duo Morbidelli and Farfus to hold off a trio of eager independent runners chasing some limelight with the opportunity of a plumb race two pole position.
Rangoni led the battle, duly slipping up the inside of Farfus at turn seven, followed by Coronel, only for the Italian to get sideways through the fearsome turn eight and allow the following train back through. Although Rangoni would use his
BMW's superiority to breeze back past Farfus and Corthals down the following straight, Coronel had been given all the opportunity he needed to slip away in eighth.
However, with Rangoni's car looking like something similar to a punch bag, he would get another shove through turn eight from Farfus and when he did attempt to come back at the Brazilian he would be pushed off at the final corner again. Eventually the Italian would fail to finish with one lap remaining.
Zanardi though was heading towards both his and Ravaglia Motorsport's best result of the season, claiming a comfortable, if not entirely easy, victory from Rydell, the Swede doing his best to close the gap down but eventually having to settle for second behind a very popular winner.
Tarquini was fairly anonymous in a lonely third place, well ahead of Dirk Muller, the German having been passed by Huisman, only for the Dutchman to play a team game to drop back into fifth place and claim his first points of the season.
Terting caught Larini to secure his best result for some races in sixth place, while Larini's seventh proved a strong result on a difficult weekend for the Chevrolet team.
