The Rally Adriatico, last round of the Italian Rally Championship, held last weekend, was thrilling and exciting in everybody's opinion. Nobody could remember such a rally in the national rally series during the last decade. The final round started with three drivers at maximum attack for the Italian drivers crown, while the constructor's title has been already won by Fiat at the previous round, the Rally Costa Smeralda.

Series favourite was Giandomenico Basso, at the wheel of Trico Motor Sport's Fiat Punto, although the Treviso-based driver was having his first experience of gravel surface Rally Adriatico. In with a chance were Paolo Andreucci, in the Procar Fiat Punto and Piero Longhi with Aimont Racing Subaru Impreza, who had only a mathematical chance of taking the title. Andreucci was only 8 points behind Basso, but Longhi was 19 points adrift and with 20 points being on offer to the winner, he needed to win to the event and hope both Basso and Andreucci retired.

On Saturday, the crews left the start line in Marche's capital moving to the rain soaked hinterland between Pesaro and Ancona, with few supporters along the twisty tracks going up and down in the beautiful region. All the stages resembled Tutta Terra Toscana, with similar weather conditions and ground consistency, with long straights where the cars were easily able to reach 170 km/h.

Piero Longhi immediately set fastest times on the opening stages and took first position on the provisional scoreboard, with Luca Cantamessa as a strong outsider at not more than 20 seconds adrift with a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VII run by Gass Racing. The Super1600 crews were immediately down the list after the first set of four stages, with Paolo Andreucci leading, just ahead of Basso and Travaglia, all of them were penalized by the low grip of the front wheel cars, versus the well-performing Japanese four wheel drive cars.

The first stop at parc ferme left several team managers looking at projectioned positions in the championship classification and making up their minds about the strategy for the second round-trip of stages: Longhi was dominating, but he was not likely to gain enough points over the Fiat drivers and the championship title looked like to was going to be a straight fight between Andreucci and Basso.

That scenario forced Giandomenico Basso to attack to the Procar driver from SS5 to stage SS8 in order to defend his 8 point advantage in the championship, and the Italian went fastest on almost all the stages, overtaking Andreucci after SS7. It was on the stage 8, where Basso, while keeping on a furious pace, went off road with his Fiat Punto rolling several times. The crew was able to get back on the track again, but the driver took the wrong direction and ran for about 300 meters, before he encountered the following car, namely Paolo Andreucci and Anna Andreussi's Fiat Punto. Both the crews were just able to avoid a crash, whilst Basso took the right direction and completed the stage with a delay of +2'33" over the Tuscan driver.

The car had suffered a big hit, so the Trico Motor Sport mechanics spent 20 minutes reshaping the back of the yellow Fiat Punto. That let Basso to go on fighting for the title, although it he was under investigation for his actions in heading down the stage the wrong way after his incident on stage 8.

Meanwhile Longhi's Subaru Impreza retired on SS5 with a turbocharger failure and many of the other Production car driver's retired on the last stage, going off road after hitting rocks placed on the track by spectators. Fiorio and Cantamessa retired for this reason and other drivers claimed they risked much when driving over those stones.

The event ended with the victory for Andrea Navarra, running a Subaru Impreza WRC, which was not registered for the Italian Championship, while Paolo Andreucci was able with a Super1600 car to win a gravel event of the Italian series and collect the maximum amount of points required to overtake Basso and claim the Italian championship title.

Paolo Andreucci, after the Italian Rally Championship title in 2001, and the Super1600 Championship title in 2002, continues his Italian series success story after three victories, the Targa Florio, Rally San Martino di Castrozza, and Rally Adriatico. Prodigious efforts were put by the Procar men, who ran a Fiat Punto rented from N Technology to give Paolo Andreucci a superior car, which showed performance and reliability during all the rounds and in all condition.

Giandomenico Basso must have his praise sung, as he outperformed all expectations driving a Fiat Punto with few upgrades, gaining a lot of experience he could maximize during next year when he is expected to pilot an official Fiat car.