A
combination of newly applied rule changes and the
disqualification of another car enabled Maserati to come
within one position of getting onto the podium in the
second round of the inaugural FIA GT World Championship,
the historic Tourist Trophy event held at Silverstone.
The
rule changes saw the Maserati MC12’s allowed to release
more of their power, but at the same time a range of
'success' weight penalties were applied to the Maseratis
relative to their results in round one of the series.
The
Maseratis raced hard to gain important rankings points
in the Tourist Trophy, but in the end the Aston Martins,
running from home base and with the advantage of racing
with 50 kg of ballast less than the Maseratis, took the
lead.
After the morning's wet warm-up session yesterday, it
stopped raining in the afternoon in Silverstone, for a
very high-energy, eventful championship race. The
excitement began soon after the start of the race. After
two laps, Grosjean's Ford Matech no. 5 - winner of the
first round in Abu Dhabi - spun around and was forced to
leave the race. Then the back right side of Hezemans's
Corvette no. 14 caught on fire, prompting the appearance
of the safety car on track for almost ten minutes. When
the race restarted, the four Maseratis, in the thick of
the group, fought curve after curve, engaging in
riveting duels with the Corvettes and the Lamborghinis.
The two Triple H Team Hegersport Maserati MC12s were the
ones to win the day's headlines with a splendid climb up
the leaderboard by Bobbi and Longin in the Maserati no.
34, which moved them up from 14th place at start-off to
their final fifth place finishing position. The last
lap's duel between Mucke and Nygaard's Aston Martin and
Longin was hard-fought, but Longin prevailed and
defended the position. The Italian/Belgian pair of
drivers was also pitted against their own team-mates
Margaritis and Heger, who were on the Maserati no. 33.
The latter had started off in the next-to-last row and
concluded with a convincing seventh place.
The
afternoon though proved tougher for the Vitaphone Racing
Team. Reigning champions Bertolini and Bartels sharing
the Maserati MC12 no. 1 took off from eighth place after
a vigorously contested race, made even more difficult by
traffic after the pit stop, despite the furious driving
of an unrestrained Bartels. For Bernoldi and Ramos in
the Maserati MC12 no. 2, a good start to the race did
not result in a good conclusion as a few problems with
the engine slowed it down at first, and then a tire
burst, forcing the car to leave the track just a few
laps prior to the end of the race.
Following the race, the Stewards at Silverstone
disqualified car no. 7, Turner/Enge's Aston Martin,
after having found it has a flat bottom against
regulations, excluding the car from the race in which it
had won the event and lifting the three surviving
Maseratis into 4th, 6th and 7th places. The next round
of the FIA GT1 World Championship will take place on 23
May at Brno in the Czech Republic.
