Maserati and Lamborghini will both be on the grid for the start of the inaugural FIA GT1 World Championship this year with the fearsome Maserati MC12 (top) back to defend its title once again in the hands of Vitaphone Racing along with the new Reiter-built Lamborghini Murciélago RSV (bottom).

Maserati and Lamborghini will both be on the grid for the start of the inaugural FIA GT1 World Championship this year with the fearsome Maserati MC12 back to defend its title once again in the hands of Vitaphone Racing along with the new Reiter-built Lamborghini Murciélago RSV.

Entries for the new 2010 FIA GT1 World Championship closed on Friday December 15th, at midnight. Six brands will be represented on the grid, with 12 teams each with two cars, making a total of 24 cars on the grid.

Maserati will be present with the hugely-successful MC12, run as usual by the five-time FIA GT Champions Vitaphone Racing Team with two cars, and new offshoot team called Triple H Team Hegersport, led by former race winner Altfrid Heger, to fulfill the ruling that each manufacturer must supply four cars equally split between two teams.

Lamborghini will be represented on the grid when the ten-round series gets underway in Abu Dhabi in 86 days time by the new Murciélago RSV which is based around the latest version of the Raging Bull's headline sports car, the SuperVeloce, with the race cars built as usual by Reiter Engineering. The Murciélago RSV was launched by Reiter Engineering last July. Two teams will run the German-prepared race cars, Münnich Motorsport, run by René Münnich of All Inkl.com which has run the GT1 class Murciélago R-GT in the FIA GT Championship in recent years, will campaign two cars, while the other pair will be run directly by Reiter Engineering.

Meanwhile the Maserati and Lamborghini runners will face opposition from Aston Martin, Ford, Nissan and Corvette in the inaugural series. Aston Martin will be represented by French team Hexis AMR, winners of the 2009 FIA GT3 European Teams Championship, and by German team Young Drivers AMR. For Corvette, the two teams are Madcroc Racing, a team made from a collaboration between FIA GT regulars Selleslagh Racing Team and DKR, and Phoenix Racing Carsport, also a joint venture between two well-known teams, Phoenix Racing and Toine Hezemans’s Carsport Holland. The Ford teams will be Matech Competition, from Switzerland, and Belgian team Marc VDS Racing, both of whom already competed in the FIA GT Championship in 2009 while finally for Nissan, the teams will be Swiss Racing Team, in the hands of Othmar Welti, and new British team Sumo Power GT, led by James Rumsey.

The applications will now be examined by the FIA, before an entry list is released by the end of the month. For Stephane Ratel, this is the culmination of years of work. “It is a dream come true and the beginning of something big. We are now going to concentrate on making the FIA GT2 European Championship a similar success.”