09.08.2004 There was an old style atmosphere to the third round of this season’s Shell Ferrari Maserati Historic Challenge, run at the Nurburgring as part of the Oldtimer GP meeting

There was an old style atmosphere to the third round of this season’s Shell Ferrari Maserati Historic Challenge, run at the Nurburgring as part of the Oldtimer GP meeting over the weekend.

As well as the usual fascination of this return to the past, the start of the first race in category B, for historic cars fitted with drum brakes, was carried out in the old “Le Mans” tradition, with drivers dashing across the track to their cars at a signal from the starter.

Coming out on top at the end of this event, run at dusk, was the 1956 Maserati 250 S of British driver Jeremy Agace, while the next race in this category saw victory go to the other 250 S (1957) of Germany’s Ralf Bender.

In the single seater grid A race, Stefan Schollwock of Germany did the double in his 1937 Maserati 6CM, on both occasions beating Britain’s Alexander Boswell in his 1952 Ferrari 625 F1 and the Swiss Peter Heuberger in a 1956 Maserati 250 F, second and third respectively.

In the C group, for cars with disc brakes, the battle for top honours was between the 1980 Ferrari 512 BB LM of France’s Francois Degand, another 512 BB LM driven by Italy’s Massimo Sordi and the 1971 Ferrari 365 GTB4 Competizione, with Britain’s David Franklin at the wheel, who all took the chequered flag in that order in Race 1.

The next round of the 2004 series for historic Ferrari and Maserati cars, run by the Maranello Corse Clienti department takes place at Donington (Great Britain) over the weekend of 12th September.