italiaspeed.com

FIA GT1 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP 2010, RD BRNO - MASERATI MC12

After plunging down leader board following a start line speeding penalty, the #1 Vitaphone Racing Maserati MC12 of Michael Bartels and Andrea Bertolini fought its way back up the order to finish in a fighting fifth place, less than two seconds behind the race winner, in the third round of the FIA GT1 World Championship which was held at Brno in the Czech Republic yesterday. Bertolini and Bartels, who had won Saturday's Qualifying race, finished one place, in yesterday's Championship encounter, ahead of the second Vitaphone Maserati MC12 driven by Bernoldi and Ramos.

The weekend at Brno for Bartels and Bertolini got underway seriously on Saturday, and the duo led from start to finish in the "Qualifying" race meaning they earned eight championship points that provisionally took them to the top of the overall championship standings, just in front of the Matech Competition duo, Grosjean and Mutsch.

Having started off from the pole position Bartels and Bertolini were able to remain out in front during the entire race, resisting Enge and Turner's final attempts to regain the top position for Aston Martin and they eventually had to settle for second. The Maserati MC12 thus confirmed its high performance and great reliability on the legendary Brno circuit. Vitaphone Racing's second Maserati MC12, driven by Bernoldi and Ramos, started out from the first row and ended the race in seventh position, slowed down by initial traffic and by subsequent pit stops.

After an excellent start which took them from seventh to fifth place, Heger and Margaritis, driving the team's #33 Maserati MC12 engaged in an imprecise maneuver when arriving for their pit stop, which saw it losing positions. They finished the race down in thirteenth place. After starting off in eleventh place, the #34 Triple H Hegersport Maserati MC12, due to slight contact with #22 Nissan GT-R during the first part of the encounter, ended the Qualifying race in tenth place thanks to Matteo Bobbi's final efforts to recover lost ground.

That neatly laid out the path to yesterday's main "Championship" race which turned out to be full of sensational developments, especially at the beginning. After the appearance of the safety car on just the second lap, the #1 Maserati MC12 was stopped by the race authorities due a stop-and-go caused by a speeding violation at the start. On the eighth lap, contact between the #40 Marc VDS Racing car and the #33 Triple H Team Hegersport Maserati driven by Heger and Margaritis resulted in a second appearance by the safety car in addition to forcing #33 MC12 to leave the track.

After the scheduled round of pit stops, Bartels and Bertolini’s Maserati MC12 performed an excellent recovery drive that took it from fourteenth place all the way up to a final fifth place, just eight tenths of a second from the podium and only 1 second and 759 thousandths from first place, which was obtained instead by Matech Competition’s Grosjean and Mutsch, the pair thus regaining their overall leadership in the championship standings having briefly lost it the day before to the Trident duo. The #1 Maserati's impressive recovery performance through the field was slowed somewhat though by the All-Inkl.com Munnich Motorsport Lamborghini Murciélago which kept the two Vitaphone Racing Team MC12s at bay for some length of time.

Bernoldi and Ramos in the #2 Vitaphone Racing Maserati MC12 ended the race in sixth place, 9.050 seconds from the winner. The #34 Triple H Team Hegersport Maserati MC12 driven by Bobbi and Longin finished in eleventh place, 25.669 seconds back from the winner.