Ferrari newsletter 2008-10-06

The F430 GT2 wins Fia Gt Championship

Maranello (Modena,) - A weekend to remember for the F430 GT2 class, as it reached new and important goals in the realm of International Grand Touring racing. Thanks to results achieved at Nogaro, the AF Corse team has taken the FIA GT Championship team title, while Toni Vilander and Gimmi Bruni won the Drivers,' in both cases with two rounds remaining. Furthermore, a Prancing Horse car was victorious on Saturday in the Petit Le Mans event at Braselton (Giorgia) and yesterday in one of the two GT Open Championship races held at Monza.

The eighth round of the FIA GT series was won by the Westbrook-Davidson Porsche, ahead of the CR Scuderia F430 driven by Tim Mullen and Andrea Piccini. Vilander and Bruni only needed to finish third to take the title. This is AF Corse's third consecutive win with the F430, following on from 2006 and 2007. As for Vilander, this result means the Finn holds onto the title he won last year, with Germany's Dirk Muller.

The next round of the FIA GT championship takes place at Zolder, in Belgium on 19th October.

In the Petit Le Mans, the tenth round of the American Le Mans Series, held on Saturday at Giorgia's Road Atlanta track in Braselton, victory went to the car driven by Jaime Melo and Mika Salo, at the end of an extremely closely fought race, which lasted for ten hours, with 358 laps or 1463.50 kilometres completed. Despite a stuck throttle and a broken drink bottle system, the Team Risi Competizione crew managed to take the win by two seconds from the Porsche 911 of Bergmeister-Henzler-Lieb. On the third step of the podium was the Tafel Racing Ferrari, thanks to an excellent showing from Dominik Farnbacher and Dirk Muller, with 355 laps to their name, taking them to second in their class classification.

The final event of the series takes place over the weekend of 19th October at Laguna Seca.

Monza staged the seventh round of the GT Open Championship: Saturday's race saw several accidents and safety car periods and was won by the Advanced Engineering F430 crewed by Peter Bamford and Matt Griffin, who beat the SR21 of Oscar Fernandez-Jose M. Perez Aicart and another Ferrari, this one entered by the Spanish Escuderia Osona and driven by Francisco Longo and Daniel Serra.

The second race saw victory go to the Richard Lietz-Gianluca Roda Porsche 911, which was followed home by the F430s of Manuel Giao-Pedro Couceiro (Scuderia Playteam Sarafree) and Xavier Pompidou-Peter Dumbreck (Trottet Racing). The class classification sees Richard Lietz-Gianluca Roda in the lead on 64 points, with the crew of Manuel Giao-Pedro Couceiro in second on 58, just one point ahead of Michele Maceratesi and Andrea Montermini.

The seventh and final round of the GT Open Championship will take place at the Barcelona circuit over the weekend of 2nd November.

-credit: ferrari