11 Oct 09
Vietoris wins but Bianchi clinches title

Christain Vietoris did his best to bring the F3 Euro Series title fight down to the wire. The Gravity driver scored his sixth win of the season on Saturday and kept his title hopes open for 24 hours. But Jules Bianchi's victory on Sunday crowned the Frenchman as the successor to 2008 champion Nico Hulkenberg.
From seventh on the race 1 grid, Vietoris faced an uphill struggle, lining up right behing his Mücke team-mate Marco Wittmann.
Vietoris already made up two places on the first few metres. On lap two, Renger van der Zande landed in the gravel trap, which caused a safety-car phase but Vietoris prevailed at the re-start, moving up from fifth to first place. The German retained this position until the end of the race with a slight cushion over Bianchi in 2nd place.
On Sunday, Bianchi's triumph sealed the championship's fate as Vietoris needed to win to keep the challenge alive. In the end, he came home 6th for the final point.
"I said I'd fight to the end and that's exactly what I did," commented Christian Vietoris. "I was finally able to make use of our speed in a Saturday race and take my first-ever 10 point race victory. Unfortunately, it was a bit late in the season and that made beating Jules a very tall order. In any case, I'd like to congratulate him and the ART team for their championship. Jules has driven consistenly and superbly all season. Hopefully we will be racing each other again next year, but this time in GP2.. In the mean time, we've got one more race to go, at Hockenheim, and that's one more opportunity to win."

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