FIA GT Championship

Care Racing Ferrari’s 7th and 10th at Brno Qualifying

The two Care Racing supported Ferrari 550 Maranellos competing in the fifth round of the FIA GT Championship, at Brno in the Czech Republic, will start from seventh and tenth places on the grid for tomorrow’s 3-hour/500 kilometre event.

© FIA GT

Pedro Lamy, driving the Larbre Competition Ferrari 550 Maranello with Gabriele Gardel, was seventh quickest overall on Saturday morning, setting a time of 1m 57.931s. Ahead of him are four Maseratis, which seem well suited to the big, open corners and uphill stretch, the GLPK Chevrolet Corvette and the Reiter Engineering Lamborghini Murcielago R-GT.

A slight breeze currently cools the track in a 27-degree heat wave, but the weather forecast is for rain this evening and a drop to 21-degrees tomorrow.
“Good, that will suit us very well on Michelins” says Gardel. “The car is better this afternoon, we have dialled out some understeer. The balance is better and it is nicer to drive in the fast corners. We are at the limit but the Maseratis are going faster. They seem to like it here.”

Larbre Competition has had a hectic week to turn the car around for Brno as well as prepare its sister 550 for the Val de Vienne round of the FFSA French GT Championship. Their Ferrari is carrying 40 kg of ballast which the drivers can feel on the uphill section, but most of their rivals are handicapped too. Only the JMB Maserati MC12 of Philipp Peter carries no ballast at all, of the front runners, and the Austrian easily set the pole position at 1m 56.322s, ahead of team-mates Andrea Bertolini and Karl Wendlinger, and the Vitaphone Maserati of Michael Bartels and Timo Scheider.

While the Larbre Competition team has had to dial out understeer, the Russian Age Ferrari 550 Maranello run by Cirtek Racing for Christophe Bouchut, Nicolay Fomenko and Alexey Vasiliev is troubled by oversteer, and the Frenchman had to settle for the ninth quickest time overall.

Like Larbre, the Cirtek managed Ferrari went to Brno direct from Le Mans, and the Russian Age team had two days to carry out a full conversion to FIA GT specification. The job list included an engine change, a gearbox rebuild, larger rear wing, new splitter, a full service and a good wash and polish.

The car was not ready until part-way into the Friday morning session and some valuable setting-up time was lost. “We have not had enough time after Le Mans, we have problems with the set-up” said Fomenko. The Ferrari was better in the afternoon session, with altered settings, but was still tending to oversteer.

It has the Le Mans qualifying engine installed, while the driveshafts and brakes are untouched since the 24-Hours “where we recorded our eighth consecutive 24-hour finish” says team owner Rob Schirle proudly.

© 2005 Planetlemans.com.