AF Corse Motorola put in a fine race at Adria last night to claim another one-two in the FIA GT Championship's GT2 class with their Ferrari 430 GT2 cars. Dirk Müller and Toni Vilander claimed their fourth win of the season, despite starting from the back of the grid after losing their qualifying times.

From the longest race, on the longest track visited in 2007, to the shortest circuit on the calendar and  the two-hour race at Adria on Saturday which was expected to be extremely close and action-packed. Moreover, the race would be held in the evening, starting at 19:45 and finishing shortly before 22:00. The last time the FIA GT Championship held a race on the Saturday night was at Silverstone in 2002 - on that occasion, Fabio Babini and Marc Duez were victorious, in their Paul Belmondo Racing Chrysler Viper GTS-R. After Spa, the title battle has closed up in the GT2 categories. With four races remaining, anything is possible, and there would be a fine battle in Adria when the teams, relaxed and ready for action after the long summer break, would meet up once again.

The weekend's action started off with a close fight throughout the free practice session saw a number of different cars lead the timesheets. However, the fastest lap was eventually set by the nr 51 AF Corse Motorola Ferrari 430 GT2 of Gianmaria Bruni and Stephane Ortelli, with a lap of 1:15.404 – over a second ahead of second-fastest GT2 car, the nr 97 BMS Scuderia Italia Porsche of Collard and Malucelli. The nr 74 Ebimotors Porsche was third-fastest.

Dirk Müller then set the fastest time of the qualifying session on Saturday afternoon, with a lap of 1:14.883 in his nr 50 AF Corse Motorola Ferrari 430 GT2. However, during post-qualifying scrutineering, the car did not pass the ride height test with tyres at 1.5 bar.  His qualifying times were therefore cancelled, and the car would start from the back of the grid. This gave Racing Team Edil Cris a one-two result in qualifying.
 

Paolo Ruberti thus inherited his home pole position with a lap of 1:14.945. Ruberti, who was also on pole in Monza, would start alongside his team-mate, FIA GT newcomer Maurizio Mediani. Originally fourth, the nr 51 AF Corse Motorola Ferrari 430 GT2 of Bruni and Ortelli moves up to third, with Mullen and Turner fourth for Scuderia Ecosse.

Come the evening race and Müller and Vilander fought their way up from the back of the grid to take the win: “We are all very happy, Toni, myself, the team,” Müller said. “After my pole position yesterday I was really thrilled, and really happy. But three hours later when we got the message that we were going to start from the back, that wasn’t really the best news we could hope for. But anyway, we got back to the front in the end, but it was a really tough race. The whole team did a really fantastic job. We might have got another 10 points this weekend, but it is still quite close and we still have to fight, but I think that it’s good for the championship and good for the spectators.”

Their team-mates Bruni and Ortelli were second. “It was a very good race for the team,” Bruni explained. “It was a fantastic race at night, and also a very fun race to be in. It went well, and a one-two for AF Corse Motorola was just what we were looking for.” Third place went to the BMS Scuderia Italia Porsche 997 GT3 RSR of Emmanuel Collard and Matteo Malucelli, the Spa winners retaining second place in the GT2 Drivers classification, between the two AF Corse Motorola pairs. “This race wasn’t great for us, but we were finally third, which is a really good result for BMS, Porsche and Pirelli,” Collard commented. “It is really good for the championship. We’re still fighting, and I know it’s going to be really tough. We’ll just try to do our best.”