FCS: Ferrari World Finals notes 2009-11-14

Season's grand finale in Valencia

Cheste (Valencia), 14 November 2009 -- Today the adventure of the participants in the Italian, European and North American Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli series ended under the Spanish sun. The 17th edition of the renowned single-marque championship assigned the remaining titles, crowning Nicolas Misslin as the Trofeo Pirelli champion in the European series and Mark McKenzie as his counterpart in the North American series. Under the eyes of a vast number of spectators, who have been populating the Ricardo Tormo di Cheste circuit since the early hours of the morning, the incredible cars taking part in the decisive stage of the Shell Ferrari Historic Challenge, eleven Ferrari FXX from the non-competitive development programme bearing the same name and eighteen historical single-seaters maintained by Maranello's F1 Clienti department went onto the track.

In the Trofeo Pirelli's main category, reserverd for the F430s, the second race in the Italian series was won by Marco Mapelli: the young driver from the Italian Rossocorsa team crossed the line ahead of Giorgio Sernagiotto (Motor/Piacenza) and Riccardo Ragazzi (Ineco/MP), while amongst the gentlemen drivers in the Coppa Shell Stefano Gai gained his ninth victory this season, winning ahead of Massimo Mantovani (Motor/Malucelli) and Eugenio Amos (Ineco/RAM).

At the end of the race for the European and the North American series -- held together, but with separate classifications -- the Italian Max Blancardi (Motor/Malucelli) won ahead of the Austrian driver Philipp Baron (Baron Service) and the Frenchman Nicolas Misslin (Stradale Automobile), who just needed a third place to win the title, while the British driver Oliver Morley (Motor/Malucelli) repeated his success from race 1 in the Coppa Shell, crossing the line first, followed by the Hungarian Tibor Valint (Warm Up) and the Frenchman Stephane Clareton (Stradale Automobile). But also the North American series crowned its champion: Mark McKenzie from the Ferrari of Houston team conquered the title, although he concluded the race in third position, behind Scott Tucker (Boardwalk Ferrari) and Harry Cheung (Ferrari of Sylicon Valley).

In the fifth and conclusive race in the extraordinary series dedicated to the historical jewels from the Prancing Horse, victory in the race of grid B, for cars with disc brakes, went to the 1992 Ferrari F40 LM driven by Darius Ahrabian, ahead of the 512 BB LM (1980) with Christian Traber and Mister John of B. In grid B, the race dedicated to the cars with drum brakes, Sean Danaher crossed the line first with the Maserati 6CM (1938), followed by the 250F (1954) with Gigi Baulino and another 6CM (1938) with Willi Balz (1937).

Tomorrow, Sunday 15 November, the Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli participants will start into the race for the world title, while in the Shell Historic Challenge the season's title will be assigned to the new champion in this series. Before the traditional show by the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro more historical single-seaters, which wrote the most wonderful chapters of Formula 1, and the client-test drivers with their Ferrari FXX will go onto the track.

Sky Sport 3 will show the Finali Mondiali live at 10am (Coppa Shell), at 1pm (Trofeo Pirelli) and the great finale at 3pm.

-credit: ferrari