Tavano and De Micheli, the two Clever Cats drivers that have taken the team to victory in the Italian Super Production Touring Car Championship, driving Alfa Romeo 147's, will, as a prize, both drive in the final round of the European Touring Car Championship next weekend at Monza. Champion Salvatore Tavano will drive a third R&M Clever Cats Alfa Romeo 156GTA alongside current young hotshots Paolo Ruberti and Fabio Francia. De Micheli will be placed with Bigazzi where he will drive a 156GTA alongside Alessandro Balzan.

The race will be used to test the drivers also ahead of Alfa Romeo's plan to bolster its factory backed operation from the current three cars to six, in an effort to combat the BMW runner's greater numbers which has seen the German marque, with seven runners, swamp the finishing positions to take a decisive lead in this year's manufacturer's championship. Next year BMW are looking to expand to nine cars.

Alfa Romeo are talking to Clever Cats and Bigazzi, the two teams who have privately run the Alfa Romeo 156GTA in this year's ETCC, about boosting links with the factory for next year. While the Clever Cats team have close ties and the arrangement is expected to be a formality, proposals hinge around either three N-Technology run cars and three Clever Cats cars or two have the factory run two, Clever Cats two and Bigazzi two, an arrangement believed to be favoured inside N-Technology.

This arrangement would see N-Technology retaining Gabriele Tarquini and Nicola Larini, while Clever Cats and Bigazzi would run young driver line-ups choosing four drivers from Francia, Ruberti, Balzan, Tavano and Di Micheli. Current factory driver Roberto Colciago could be placed with one of these teams or, as is expected, be dropped from the Alfa Romeo operation. With Tarquini, Larini and Colciago having reached the peak of their career's Alfa Romeo see it as important to start training their eventual replacements as soon as possible.