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The Ferrari
430 Scuderia made its racing debut in the FIA GT3
Championship this weekend with five of the new cars
being split amongst three teams: CRS Racing, JMB Racing
and Kessel Racing which designed and built the cars.
Although the new racer only scrapped around the bottom
of the top-10 positions the V8 engined Berlinetta did show plenty
of promise that it can be honed into a race winning car
and with the machine being pretty raw at Silverstone it was a
satisfying debut. In fact CRS Sacing only received
their brace of cars on Wednesday and after qualifying
the 430 Scuderia was quickly handed a bigger restrictor
advantage.
The 2009 FIA
GT3 European Championship finally got underway at the weekend with thirty-two cars joining the five 430 Scuderias on track taking part in the two races at
Silverstone. Swiss Ferrari specialist Kessel Racing
which has developed the car over the winter entered two on
the new 430 Scuderias with an all-Brazilian crew made up
of Paolo Bonifacio and Claudio Ricci in the #7 entry
while Italians Andrea Palma and Stefano Gattuso shared
the #8. Perennial Ferrari runners JMB Racing had one
example of the 430 Scuderia on track at the British circuit
for French crew Jean-Marc Bachelier and Yannick Mallegol
(they also entered a Ferrari 430 GT3 for another French
duo, Pascal Ballay and Jonathan Sicart). Finally CR
Scuderia, which was making its debut in the FIA GT3
category, had two examples of the new car with the #55
piloted by British duo Chris Niarchos and Chris Goodwin,
while the #56 was in the hands of American driver Robert Hisson and British pilot Phil Quaife.
Despite
running the smaller restrictor in qualifying Kessel
Racing's Bonifacio set the seventh fastest time, one
place ahead of team mate Palma in qualifying for race
one. In qualifying for race two, it
was again a Kessel entry that led the 430 Scuderia
quintet in the time sheets with this time Gattuso setting the
ninth best time while Ricci failed to set a time. With
CRS Racing only receiving its new cars on Wednesday the
team had to learn on its feet this weekend. Qualifying
was tough for the British team with Niarchos taking 21st place and Hissom
taking 26th for race one while Quaife locked out 13th on
grid and Goodwin was 15th for race two. The JMB entry
failed to trouble the quick runners and it claimed 23rd
and 35th places for race one and race two respectively.
However the
Kessel's cars failed to shine in the race as a gearbox
failure forced the #8 entry of Palma and Gattuso to miss
the start while the sister #7 car of Bonifacio and Ricci
retired at half distance, so instead it was the CR
Scuderia cars that made the most noise for Maranello. Niarchos’
storming start though ended in disappointment when his
team-mate, Goodwin, was shown the black flag in
error. The sister CRS car, in the hands of Hissom and
Quaife, was running in ninth place with a lap to go but
a top ten finish slipped away when the car had fuel
starvation issues and they were eventually
classified in 17th place. Both Niarchos and Hissom got
away well at the start, gaining positions immediately.
Niarchos, who was simultaneously racing in the FIA GT and FIA GT3
Championships, had a particularly good
start and proceeded to gain about three places on every
lap until he was up to tenth, after just 15 minutes of
racing. By the time the pit stops began he was up to
eighth and he came in to hand over to Chris Goodwin.
Unfortunately as soon as Goodwin rejoined he received a
one-second drive-through penalty as he was judged to
have left the pits a second too early. He came in to
serve the penalty, which put him right down the field,
but then to add insult to injury he was black-flagged
for apparently not coming in to serve his penalty. After
giving Goodwin the black flag in error and terminating
his race the FIA Race Director issued the following
apology: “During the required pit stop No.55 failed to
comply with the 70 second pit stop window. As a result
of which a stop and go penalty of 1 second was given and
complied with by the driver Chris Goodwin and by the
team. No further penalties should have been imposed to
the driver or the team.”
Hissom drove a good first half in No.56 before he pitted
to hand over to Quaife. Phil had a fantastic run and
fought his way right through the pack up to ninth. After
lots of changes of position Quaife was running strongly
in tenth when he radioed in to say his car was starting
to falter and he subsequently dropped to 17th at the
finish. “I had a lot of fun out there today,” said
Niarchos. “In fact I think I’ll resign from the GT2
team. The car is now so much better than it was in
qualifying; not just in terms of speed, the balance is
much better. The thing I love about GT3 is the sheer
size of the grid; you have to fight for every scrap of
race track through every second of the race and I love
it. It’s such a shame that we were black flagged in
error; it was a big disappointment.”
In race two
Quaife and Hissom were the best placed of the five 430
Scuderia runners in 12th place while Ricci/Bonifacio
with 18th, Mallegol/Bachelier
were 21st and Niarcos/Goodwin 23rd. Gattuso and
Palma
retired after seven laps. Goodwin and Niarchos were
having a good run but their final result was scuppered
by a seat-belt problem. The belts came loose at the end
of Goodwin’s stint so he pitted early and Niarchos
headed out. Unfortunately Niarchos had to then pit again
to fix the belts and too much time was lost to challenge
for any results.
Meanwhile at
the front Dimitri Enjalbert and Johan-Boris Scheier
celebrated the maiden win for the AutoGT Racing Morgan
Super Sport in yesterday's opening round of this year's
series. Starting from pole position Enjelbert briefly
lost the lead but bounced back to hold the advantage
until Scheier came under pressure late in the race from
the Phoenix Racing Audi R8 LMS of Christopher Haase. The
German swept into the lead on lap 22, but a technical
problem forced the Audi into the pits to retire,
promoting Scheier back into the lead, which he held
until the flag. In a perfect display of Anglo-Franco
relations, the Morgan Aero Super Sport of Maxime Martin
and Gael Lesoudier scored a lights to flag victory in
the second round of the FIA GT3 series today. The
British car, prepared and run by the French AutoGT
Racing team, has dominated the weekend with w in apiece
for each of the crews. It was also a good second race
for Audi with the Phoenix Racing Audi R8 LMS of
Christopher Haase and Christopher Mies moving up through
the field from 16th to finish in 2nd place. Third place
was snatched by Nicolas Armindo with a last corner move
on Thomas Accary in the Team Rosberg Audi to take the
second podium of the weekend for himself and Cesar
Campanico.
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