Marcel Fässler and Joël Camathias (middle) driving a Ferrari F430 GT entered by Trottet Racing, won the International GT Open Championship title at the weekend after claiming race one, while the first Ferrari home in race two was the Megadrive entry piloted by Marco Cioci and Piergiuseppe Perazzini (bottom).

At this season's sixth and last race counting for the International GT Open and Spanish GT Championship, held over the weekend at the Portuguese circuit Parco Algarve, two Ferrari F430 GTs wrapped up the 2009 titles in both series, racing together in separate classifications.

Marcel Fässler and Joël Camathias, with the GT2 class F430 GT entered by Trottet Racing, won the title in the International GT Open Championship. The drivers from the Swiss team had held the leadership in the championship over the whole season. Therefore winning the first race held on Saturday afternoon was enough for them to wrap up the title.

There was a lot of joy among the members of the Trottet Racing, which thus clinches the first major title of its young career, while Joël Camathias is the first driver to win the GT Open for the second time and Marcel Fässler obtains a first, well-deserved international recognition. "We are extremely happy," commented team owner François Trottet, "it has been a tough season, but we have been competitive and have done little mistakes throughout it. The drivers and all the guys have done a superb job and I am particularly happy because it has been a clean, exciting and fair-play fight with our rivals, and this tells a lot about the standards of the GT Open."

At the end of race 1 the F430 GT of Fässler-Camathias crossed the finish line ahead of two Porsche 911 GT3 RSRs which were piloted by the Ferrari drivers' closest championship rivals Gianluca Roda-Richard Lietz and Raymond Narac-Patrick Pilet. It meant that with one race remaining in the overall standings, Fässler-Camathias now had an uncatchable 229 points compared to 206 points for Lietz-Roda and 188 for Pilet-Narac. Meanwhile in the second race, held on Sunday, the first F430 GT crossing the line was the one driven by Marco Cioci and Piergiuseppe Perazzini (Megadrive), the duo coming home behind three Porsches in the order of Narac-Pilet, Jean Philippe Belloc-Richard Balandras and Roda-Lietz.

At the end of the races held at the Parco Algarve circuit the Spanish GT Championship was won by the Portuguese drivers Ricardo Bravo and Lourenço da Veiga. In their home race the ASM Team drivers finished only fifth in the first race, with the F430GT of Peter Sundberg-Juan Manuel Lopez (Exact Racing), the Porsche 911 GT3 RSR driven by Miguel Amaral-Miguel A. de Castro and the Mosler of Martin Short locking out the podium positions. In race 2 the two Portuguese drivers conquered a spectacular victory ahead of the Porsche with Amaral-De Castro and the other Ferrari driven by Sundberg-Lopez.