The Care Racing supported Ferrari 550 Maranello teams did not get the results they craved today at the seventh round of the FIA GT Championship at Oschersleben. Pedro Lamy and Gabriele Gardel finished 7th, and scored two valuable points for the teams' and the drivers' championships, while the Russian Age Racing team finished outside the points in 13th position. Gardel is now eight points shy of Andrea Bertolini and Karl Wendlinger in the championship for drivers, while the Larbre team remains third in the teams' classification.

The Larbre Competition team took a gamble on its tyre choice and attempted to double-stint the Michelin tyres, but that did not work as they had hoped it would. "We tried to double-stint the tyres, but it was not the right choice," said Gabriele Gardel. "We had to try to do something different but, while I am sorry for Bartels, it was not as bad as it could have been for the championship! We were unlucky today because the car was not in perfect shape. It was not a good track for us, and fortunately we lose some weight (ballast) for Istanbul."

Team manager Jack Leconte added: "Michelin was preparing for high temperatures, perhaps 30 degrees on the road and air temperature of 25 degrees. The morning session, the temperature was 18-20 degrees and the tyres were too hard, but we did not have enough grip. We confirmed that was wrong because we took four laps to get any grip, and normally we need only one.

"There was a chance to have better temperature later, but it was not enough. The afternoon temperatures rose to 22 or 23 degrees, and the tyre was running faster but we lost 30 seconds at the beginning and we could not make that back up. We had discussed several times the option of double-stinting the tyres and Michelin confirmed that we could do it easily, but the tyres did not perform as we had hoped and we had to stop again. We also had a slight contact with Gounon which bent the exhaust and so we lost power."

The Russian Age Racing team was not able to capitalise on its qualifying performance and Christophe Bouchut ran in the top seven during the opening stint before he handed to Alexey Vasiliev.  "The car was OK, but we had a problem with understeer which made the car difficult to drive," said Bouchut. "I lost grip at the rear towards the end of the first stint, so it was not one of our best races."

The Russian had problems of his own during his stint.  He stalled leaving the pits, and then had a drive-through penalty as he dropped a wheel over the white line leaving the pits. "It was very hot inside the car, and there was no water," he said. "I stayed out on the track for my full hour, but I was finding it difficult to concentrate. The car was understeering, but that was because of the front splitter and bonnet that we were running."

Nikolay Fomenko was the last to drive the car, but he had a further problem with the right rear wheel when the drive pegs sheared, and he had to pit again. "The traffic was a big problem for us, many cars were not helping us to pass them when we were lapping them. I followed a Porsche for half a lap unable to get past him until we got to the straight and I could use our extra power."

FIA GT Championship, Oschersleben - Race Result: 1st GT1 Babini/Biagi Maserati MC12 GT1 121 laps, 2nd GT1 Bertolini/Wendlinger Maserati MC12 GT1 -20.290, 3rd GT1 Hezemans/Kumpen/Longin Corvette C5R -24.990, 4th GT1 Lechner/Gounon Saleen S7 R -58.105, 5th GT1 Peter/ Zwaan/Zani Maserati MC12 GT1 -1:15.233, 6th GT1 Deletraz /Piccini Ferrari 575 GTC -1 LAP, 7th GT1 Lamy/Gardel Ferrari 550 Maranello -1 LAP, 8th GT1 Kox/Simon Lamborghini Murcielago R-GT -1 LAP, 11th GT1 Keen/Halliday Lister Storm GT -4 LAPS, 12th GT1 Hermann /Stahl/Konrad Saleen S7 R -6 LAPS, 13th GT1 Bouchut/ Fomenko/Vasiliev Ferrari 550 Maranello -7 LAPS