Bertolini/Bartels finished today's FIA GT Championship race at Brno in sixth place, one ahead of Vitaphone team mates Ramos/Negraõ, despite both Maserati MC12s being heavily laden with ballast following their recent successes.

Important results for the Vitaphone Racing Team Maseratis were obtained in Brno, Czech Republic, where the seventh round of the FIA GT was run today. The two Maserati MC12s, heavily weighed down with ballast after their excellent performance at Spa Francorchamps and Bucharest (125 kg to Bertolini/Bartels, 90 to Ramos/Negraõ), finished in excellent positions in today’s race, enabling the Tridente to keep its absolute supremacy in the championship for series-produced GT cars.

At the start the Brazilian Negraõ started off well, but there was contact with Piccini’s car, causing a spin and the loss of the left door, which was replaced in the eleventh lap. Meanwhile, Bertolini sprinted from tenth to seventh place and settled behind Esteban Tuero’s Ferrari, overtaking him at the fourth lap. Bertolini/Bartels remained steadily in sixth place until the finish line, while at the end Ramos and Negraõ managed to climb to seventh place.

In the general classification Bertolini and Bartels now have a 13.5-point advantage over their Vitaphone team mates Ramos/Negraõ and 11 points over Hezemans/Gollin’s Corvette. The next round will be on October 5th in Nogaro, France.

Andrea Bertolini: “In this race we reached the goal we’d aimed for; our objective was sixth place and we got it. Pity that when we refuelled the second time we lost a few precious seconds due to traffic in the pit stop lane, otherwise we would have been able to get close enough to attack Muller.”

Michael Bartels: “We were able to get a good result during this very tricky race for us. We were racing with an outrageous amount of ballast but we nevertheless earned three crucial points, giving up very little to our adversaries and keeping high our position in the championship. We’ll race with 40 kg less on board in Nogaro and I think we’ll be able to return to our usual positions.”