Dubai: Gabriele Lancieri race report

Gabriele Lancieri Did A Great Job in Dubai!

Don't be deceived by the 7th position conquered by Graham Nash's Saleen. Because Graham Nash's driver Gabriele Lancieri managed to bring the car up to the 3rd overall position during his driving stint.

Gabriele's three day adventure in Dubai didn't start off on a good note. Due to serious technical problems, Gabriele wasn't able to participate in the free practice session on Wednesday. Even if the Saleen qualified in 5th place on the grid, Lancieri only managed to do about 7 laps during the qualifications.

The race with the # 28 Saleen instead started off well. Paolo Ruberti was able to conquer a position and finished his stint in 4th place .The car was then given to Gabriele who slowly lowered his times and climbed up one position: to 3rd place .

The driver from Imola's brilliant performance however was then put in vain by the third driver;Rocky Augusta who isn't at all at the same level as the Ruberti and Lancieri duo. At the end ,the crew had to be content with the seventh place in the GT category with 4 lap gap from the winner.

Gabriele Lancieri

"To be honest I don't know if I should be happy with these 2 points that the Graham Nash team and I summoned up for the first time or if I should be sad for the great opportunity that we lost. I only thought about pushing hard when I got in the car because I knew that we would later be penalized by a slower driver. I pushed so hard that I was in third place when I finished the second hour of the race. It was an extremely positive result. Once again, I battled it out with more prestigious cars, like I did in Imola. We just need to take a look at how many km of testing the Maserati did this year. They did about 13000 and I did zero! I'm very satisfied with my performance. But seeing that in the GT category you don't compete alone; you need to count on fast and well prepared team-mates.

Having lost that podium burns almost as much as the heat that we had in the cockpit today."

-gpgroup-