|
Saturday saw this season's adventure of the
participants in the Italian, European and North
American Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli
series' ending under the Spanish sun in
Valencia. The seventeenth
edition of the single-marque championship assigned its remaining titles, crowning Nicolas Misslin
as the Trofeo Pirelli champion in the European
series and Mark McKenzie as his counterpart in
the North American series.
Under the eyes
of many spectators populating the
Ricardo Tormo di Cheste circuit the racing cars taking part in the decisive
stage of the Shell Ferrari Historic Challenge, as well as eleven
Ferrari FXXs from the non-competitive development programme
bearing the same name and eighteen historical single-seaters
maintained by Maranello’s F1 Clienti department also went onto
the track yesterday.
In the Trofeo Pirelli’s main category,
reserved for the F430 Challenge cars, the second race in the Italian
series was won by Marco Mapelli: the young driver from the
Italian Rossocorsa team crossed the line ahead of Giorgio
Sernagiotto (Motor/Piacenza) and Riccardo Ragazzi (Ineco/MP),
while amongst the gentlemen drivers in the Coppa Shell
Stefano Gai gained his ninth victory this season, winning
ahead of Massimo Mantovani (Motor/Malucelli) and Eugenio
Amos (Ineco/RAM).
At the end of the race for the European and
the North American series – held together, but with separate
classifications – the Italian Max Blancardi (Motor/Malucelli)
won ahead of the Austrian driver Philipp Baron (Baron
Service) and the Frenchman Nicolas Misslin (Stradale
Automobile), who just needed a third place to win the title,
while the British driver Oliver Morley (Motor/Malucelli)
repeated his success from race 1 in the Coppa Shell,
crossing the line first, followed by the Hungarian Tibor
Valint (Warm Up) and the Frenchman Stephane Clareton (Stradale
Automobile). But also the North American series crowned its
champion: Mark McKenzie from the Ferrari of Houston team
conquered the title, although he concluded the race in third
position, behind Scott Tucker (Boardwalk Ferrari) and Harry
Cheung (Ferrari of Silicon Valley).
In the fifth and conclusive race series dedicated to the historical jewels from
the Prancing Horse, victory in the race of grid B, for cars
with disc brakes, went to the 1992 Ferrari F40 LM driven by
Darius Ahrabian, ahead of the 512 BB LM (1980) driven
Christian Traber and Mister John of B. In grid B, the race
dedicated to the cars with drum brakes, Sean Danaher crossed
the line first with the Maserati 6CM (1938), followed by the
250F (1954) with Gigi Baulino and another 6CM (1938) with
Willi Balz (1937).
Meanwhile Felipe
Massa arrived at Valencia from Sao Paulo yesterday morning.
The recuperating Brazilian driver was finally able to take a
seat in his F60’s cockpit again, set up some details of his
positioning with today's show looming into sight. “I’m very
happy to be here: I would have felt sorry if I had had to
pass the occasion, it would have been the first time since
I’ve been an official Ferrari driver that I had missed the
Finali Mondiali," Massa said.
"Furthermore it will be great to get back to driving my car. I’ll
immediately return back home to be with Raffaela: the
doctors confirmed yesterday that our child will not be born
this weekend, so I decided to make this flying visit here in
Spain.”
Today, Sunday 15 November,
will see the Ferrari
Challenge Trofeo Pirelli participants scheduled to start the
race for the world title, while in the Shell Historic
Challenge this season’s title will be assigned to the new
champion in this series. Before the traditional
event-closing show by the
Scuderia Ferrari drivers, Felipe Massa, Giancarlo
Fisichella, Luca Badoer and Marc Gené, more historical single-seaters,
which wrote some of the most wonderful chapters of Formula 1's
history, and
the client-test drivers with their Ferrari FXX will go onto
the track.
|
