Photo: acisportitalia.it
Brazilian driver does enough at Monza season finale to beat Luca Ghiotto to European and Italian championship titles…
Nicolas Costa has become champion of the Formula Abarth European Series and Italian Series after the final weekend of the season at Monza. The Brazilian Euronova driver came into the weekend at the head of both standings, and after finishing the first race of the weekend in sixth he came third in race two.
That meant he brought a 12 point European series lead into the final race and after starting fourth he got up into second ahead of rival Luca Ghiotto. A trip through the Parabolica gravel dropped him down to 11th but he fought his way back to cross the line in third and win both titles. He succeeds Auto GP star Sergey Sirotkin as European champion and GP3 ace Patric Niederhauser as Italian champion.
2012 was Costa’s third in single-seaters. In 2010 he won the Formula Futuro Fiat title in Brazil, something that earned him a place in Ferrari’s Driver Academy. For whatever reason, that relationship didn’t last long. Last year in Formula Abarth he was ninth in the Formula Abarth European standings and fifth in the Italian standings. Like Sirotkin, Costa could stick with Euronova and do Italian F3 or Auto GP next year.