Paul Edwards Mondello-Race 2

19 September 1999

EFDA Euroseries Mondello Park, Ireland

The second event of the weekend started with an early qualifying on a dry track. After being quickest in practice on Friday, American Paul Edwards felt confident about setting a good qualifying time for today's race. However, it was not to be. After his first lap, there was a failure of the input shaft, which goes from the engine to the gearbox. Team Meritus did have a backup car, but it was setup for a wet track. With time running out in the session, Paul went out with that setup and was able to qualify in the 8th position. After a protest being lodged, that qualifying time was disallowed, and Paul was forced to retain the original lap time he had made with his damaged car. Now, Paul would start in the 14th position.

At the beginning of the race Paul realized that the shaft failure had possibly caused a problem in the engine - there was an intermittent loss of power. He was off the pace between 1 to 3 seconds. Paul did manage to gain a number of positions to finish in 8th place. The top 3 positions did not change from qualifying - 1) Scheckter, 2) Malkin, 3) Sato. The 4th finisher, Keohane had advanced from 7th, and Domingos had started and finished in 5th. This did drop Paul again to 4th in the championship by 3 points. Only 2 rounds to go!

The next event is the end of the championship - Zandvoort, Netherlands - October 2-3.