FIA GT Championship

Larbre Competition returns to FIA GT with Pedro Lamy

Triple FIA GT Championship-winning team Larbre Competition has announced its plans to compete in the 2005 season. The French team, which won Teams and Driver titles in 2000, 2001 and 2002, will enter two Ferrari 550 Maranello cars in the 2005 season. Their ambition is to put up the strongest possible challenge to the Maserati MC 12 cars, with the fast, reliable and well-proven Prodrive-built 550 and Michelin tyres.

The cars will be led by two of Larbre Competition’s victorious team from the 2004 Le Mans Endurance Series. The first car will be driven by Portugal’s Pedro Lamy and Gabriele Gardel from Switzerland, while the second car will be led by Steve Zacchia, also from Switzerland.

Lamy previously drove in the FIA GT Championship in 1998, when he claimed the GT2 title with Olivier Beretta and Chrysler Viper Team Oreca. Gabriele Gardel has been a regular in the FIA GT Championship for the last two years. A podium finisher in the N-GT category in 2003 with Freisinger Motorsport, he drove for BMS Scuderia Italia in 2004. He won two races with his team-mate Matteo Bobbi, in Hockenheim and then in Dubai, after a fantastic fight with the Maserati MC 12. Zacchia competed for Force One in the 2003 Championship, in a Chrysler Viper.

“Larbre Competition has been one of the most successful teams in GT Racing in recent years,” Stephane Ratel commented. “It is great for the FIA GT Championship to have them back, which will fill the gap left by the absence of BMS Scuderia Italia in this year’s Championship.”

Gardel, joint second in the 2004 Championship, will be driving for Larbre for the first time : “I am very proud and happy to be able to drive the Ferrari 550 again, and I am very glad that Mr Leconte has given me this opportunity, especially to be alongside a top driver like Pedro Lamy. The Championship looks difficult for this year, but I believe Bobbi and I showed last year that the Maserati is not unbeatable. With Larbre, Pedro, Michelin and the car - I am really excited at the thought of the coming season!”

Larbre Competition is undoubtedly one of the most successful teams to have ever competed in the FIA GT Championship. Although it took part on a race-by-race basis in the early years, the French team’s full-time participation started in 2000, when the new N-GT category came into being. Entering two Porsche 996 GT3 cars, Larbre won the first-ever N-GT race in Valencia, and went on to claim the inaugural N-GT teams title. Its star drivers, Christophe Bouchut and Patrice Goueslard, won the Drivers title that year.

The next year, the team moved up to the GT category, entering a Chrysler Viper GTS-R for Bouchut and former Oreca driver Jean-Philippe Belloc. It continued to race in the N-GT category with a pair of Porsches. Partly thanks to a magnificent win in the Proximus 24 Hours of Spa, run as part of the Championship for the first time, the team won the GT title, with Bouchut taking his second consecutive FIA title alongside Belloc.

2002 proved to be another successful year, with Bouchut claiming the Drivers title alone, while Larbre claimed its third consecutive title. By 2003, the Chrysler Viper was aging, and the team did not complete the season, despite a strong showing at Spa.

2004 was the first FIA GT season since 1999 to start without Larbre; the team, however, continued its winning ways, claiming the inaugural Le Mans Endurance Series title with a Ferrari 550 Maranello, driven by Bouchut, former FIA GT champion Pedro Lamy and Swiss youngster Steve Zacchia. In November, the team competed in the GT Festival, team owner Jack Leconte winning the highly competitive GT3 category.