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Care Racing
supported Ferrari 550 Maranellos will start from 5th, 7th
and 12th position on the grid in tomorrow's final round of
the 2005 FIA GT Championship after a tense two qualifying
periods today in Bahrain.
In the first session, held under the hotter midday sun, cars
11 and 18 elected not to run at all and saved their tyres
for the second, cooler 45 minute session. Aston Martin set
the pace early on, only to be bettered by four tenths of a
second when the Maserati of Andrea Bertolini came out of the
pits. First round to Maserati.
As the day progressed and the temperatures dropped, it was
shaping up to be a hotly contested qualifying session. Pedro
Lamy set his fastest time of 1:55.352 on his first flying
lap but was unable to improve on that due to traffic. He
reflected on what took place: "Tomorrow is going to be a
battle more about tyres than fuel consumption, I think. Bouchut
is on Michelin like us and he's on pole, but the other guys
are on Pirelli and they are very fast. We will see what
happens during the race. Hopefully they won't have as good a
race as we do! I had traffic on every one of my qualifying
laps except the first, but actually I think that 1:55.352 is
the right time for us and will be the pace during the race."
Young Swiss driver, Steve Zacchia, was deputised to qualify
car 12, using his more extensive Maranello experience, and
sliced nearly three tenths of a second from his best
practice time. His two new team mates for the weekend,
Bervillé and Narac, have made good progress over the last
two days with, respectively, a new car and track to learn. Zacchia
was not entirely happy, however. "I think my best lap would
have been the one after [the 1:56.867] but I made a few
mistakes on that lap so I am a bit disappointed. I did what
I could and will do better tomorrow."
Also improving consistently was Russian driver, Alexey
Vasiliev, in the Russian Age Racing Ferrari 550. His time of
1:58.047 saw him qualify ahead of the Lister Storm and a
Saleen S7.
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