FIA GT – Silverstone – Race Report

By The ‘fin’ of this one we would have Finns on the top step of the podium of three of the four categories – GT1, GT2 and Citation Cup.

GT1
Karl Wendlinger took his JetAlliance Aston Martin into the lead heading into Copse from Mike Hezemans’ Corvette, much to the Dutchman’s surprise “I got such a good start I thought it was too good and too easy so I ended up braking too hard and going into the first corner like grandma. Wendlinger braked later and passed me.”

Bertolini opted to take his ‘hangover’ yellow flag infringement penalty from Zhuhai straight away, entering the pitlane for a 30 second drive-through on lap one. The FIA had ordered the team to take the penalty within the first five laps.

Wendlinger led from Hezemans and Biagi and already by the end of the first lap a gap was forming back to Davies, Pier Guidi, Kumpen and Ramos. Then it was Monfardini, the two Lamborghinis, Peter and Barwell’s Cocker. Bertolini rejoined from serving the penalty in 28th place, 40 seconds off the lead.

On lap 3 Wendlinger ran slightly wide at Priory, Hezemans seizing the opportunity and pulling through at Brooklands. “I was lucky that he made the mistake, but I had already seen him sliding a lot and was attacking him. I think we had the best car in the first stint, the Maserati was better at the end.”

Biagi made it past the slithering Aston Martin shortly afterwards. Wendlinger explains: “The car was working well, just like all weekend but the problem was that we lost rear grip too early, after just six or seven laps I was really struggling. Hezemans got past me and I kept Biagi behind for a couple of laps but he was clearly faster than me and I didn’t want to block him anymore. We possibly had a bit too much tyre pressure.”

The story of the first stint was this lead trio also that of Bertolini recovering. By lap seven he was up to 14th, ahead of all the GT2 cars, 51 seconds down on the leader with a 20 second gap to Cocker and a nice tract of clear tarmac ahead of him to attack. His first clear lap time was a 1:47.3, which was 3 seconds faster than those immediately ahead.

Peter and Cocker both made it past Basseng in the second Lamborghini, which had been dropping back from Kox’s example right from the start. On lap 11 Davies lost five seconds in one lap in the Aston Martin, losing not just the time but two positions to Kumpen and Pier Guidi. Ramos then made it past Davies too and these two then seemed to have an incident free but unspectacular remainder of the race, finishing sixth and seventh respectively.

Davies was perhaps lucky to get the two points for seventh rather than one for eighth as he lost five seconds in the final lap, passing the chequered flag just 0.2 seconds ahead of last of the point-scorers, Pier Guidi.

The Lamborghinis were the first to take their initial mandatory stops. Menten rejoined still on the lead lap but the Lamborghini was to be the first (and only) GT1 retirement with 50 minutes gone – a “very minor electrical problem” was the news from the team. Actually, the Kessel 575 retired too, but that was a Citation GT1 car, rather than a ‘real’ one. The Citation Cup was lost in the GT2 scrap, but was won by Cloet and Kuismanen, who were the class of that mini-field all weekend.

As the pitstops commenced Bertolini was setting about the gaggle of three at the back of the GT1 class, ignoring of course, as it was quite easy to do, the Citation Cup runners. Kumpen began to reel in Wendlinger as the Austrian’s tyres deteriorated further, PK’s Corvette was looking very racy and defying its age. Kumpen was having a hard time though “We need more power because we only had the 19th highest speed this weekend, it was very hard to pass the GT1 cars so I had to take some big risks to get from seventh up to fourth.”

Monfardini’s Aston in eighth led Peter, the PSI Corvette going much better in the race than it had so far this weekend. Cocker and Bertolini were right behind, this train of cars being covered by just eight 1/10ths of a second. Peter: “We had struggled with the compound on the new Pirelli tyres but I started well. I had a lot of fuel which slowed me up but when it settled down it came good and the car was fast and consistent, I had some good lap times in the middle of the stint.”

This scrap was over all too soon though as Peter explains “the Aston Martin [Monfardini] missed a gear twice on the back straight and I hit him in the back and lost the engine cover.” The bonnet ended up just off-line immediately after Club and seemed a fairly major hazard, but it was presumably blown away by the passing cars as there was no safety car period at all at this race, nor for that matter was there any rain.

The Corvette circulated with no bonnet or upper front left wing for the remainder of Peter’s stint “it definitely effected the aerodynamics but we didn’t lose too much time until the pitstop, I think we shouldn’t have tried to fix it.”

As Monfardini’s Aston headed for the pits for the driver change, Bertolini made up three places, neither Cocker nor the bonnetless Peter being able to defend the Maserati’s advances.

With 40 minutes gone the lead trio were pit-bound: first Wendlinger, then Hezemans and Biagi. Hezemans’ lead of six seconds was reversed in the pits as Salo emerged in the lead in the #1 Maserati. Worse was to come for Carsport Holland as Deletraz had a high speed spin on his out-lap at Becketts. Not even team-mate Mike Hezemans was able to speak with Deletraz about this after his stint, because J-D D was off to Valencia for the Le Mans Series race as soon as he climbed out of the car. “I don’t know what happened but he was under a lot of pressure and didn’t have much time in the car, we didn’t even go out in warm-up so I don’t blame him. Without the spin I think it would have been very close at the front. The car was fantastic, the tyres were unbelievable, I would never have expected them to last so well at Silverstone.”

Deletraz was soon back up to speed in what was effectively second place, ten seconds ahead of Ryan Sharpe, who was now piloting the lead JetAlliance Aston. The tardy stop and Deletraz’s spin meant Carsport Holland were 25 seconds behind Salo and that was the lead pair set until the end of the race, despite a spirited second stint from Hezemans the Maserati was ultimately superior, particularly in Biagi’s second stint. The Italian, despite a comfortable looking time cushion admitted that he “pushed like crazy to the end because you never know what might happen and the car was feeling very nice. It is too early to think of the championship, Spa will be crucial and we just have to live race by race.” It’s a good job he did push like crazy, because a yellow flag infringement here was punished with a 30 second penalty, reducing their lead at the end until 7.465 seconds. Deletraz’s spin assumes even more significance…

With an hour to go the order, with gaps to the leader was:

1. Salo,
2. Deletraz – 23.316
3. Peter – 27.510 (but not yet stopped),
4. Sharp – 30.012
5. Longin – 39.975
6. Piccini – 51.274
7. Montanari – 54.382
8. Giannoccaro – 1:14.877
9. Babini - 1:18.207
10. Mucke - 1:26.643
11. Toccacelo – 1:32.869
12. Johnson – 1:42.880

When Peter did finally stop, the repair attempts with some red tank tape put paid to PSI’s efforts and although they finished, their challenge was over.

Giannocarro picked up a stop/go penalty, presumably for speeding (74kmh) in the pitlane but he succumbed to Babini anyway before taking the rap.

Montanari had managed to get past Piccini briefly, halting the meteoric rise of #11 before Piccini re-took the position and handed over to Bertolini for a fifth placed finish. Not too bad from 28th after the first lap.

The penalty for the #12 Maserati relegated them to eighth, last of the points positions and a front left puncture for Toccacelo’s Aston put paid to any late challenge from them too.

Sharpe drove an excellent middle stint, eating into Deletraz’s second place and going on to take the position under braking at the end of the Hangar Straight. “It was the first time I had been behind anyone in a GT car and I couldn’t believe how much downforce you lose. I had a look at Copse but got caught out with the loss of downforce but then I got a good run on him onto the straight and got him at the end. It is always nice when you can overtake someone!”

Deletraz hung on to the JetAlliance Aston Martin gamely until he pitted before jumping on that flight to Spain. Salo handed back to Biagi leaving Sharpe in the lead, neither Carsport Holland nor Vitaphone took any advantage in this second round of stops.

Sharpe: “The stint went really well, right up until I had two laps to go when I came up behind one of the GT2 Ferraris [the class leader at the time] and he indicated to the right and then went right, but some of them had been indicating one way, then going the other, so it was a shame because we hit and that cost us time. I think we’d have been third without that. It was really good though, at Zhuhai it was my first GT race and we weren’t competitive, we had a lot of problems but we’ve made some big changes and improvements and we will have some more changes for Bucharest where hopefully we’ll be good for a podium and able to match the Maserati. I think we had the fastest car over a single lap here but we still have work to do over a long distance.”

Having recovered from his off-track excursion, Sharpe entered his pit bay at speed with 30 minutes to go, knocking the awaiting front right tyre out of the way. Sharpe’s delay meant that Hezemans was now secure in second but Longin’s pace meant that he had handed over the PK Corvette to Kumpen in an excellent third, which they held until the flag. JetAlliance missed out on a podium by just ten seconds then, despite a solid performance from Wendlinger “the second set of tyres had already been used but on those the car was very stable and consistent. I was able to do 47s and 48s so I think without Ryan’s problem we would have come out of the pitstop ahead and that pace would have been enough to keep them [PK} behind, no? We need to work on this because in qualifying the pace is good but we need to improve the car over longer distances.”

Kumpen admitted that the team had been somewhat flummoxed over set-up choices “we had the fastest car in qualifying but it felt terrible. I said we should use the Zhuhai set-up and they looked at me like I was stupid. But it seemed to work!”

In the last fifteen minutes Pier Guidi took eighth off Basseng and the only significantly closing gap was then that between Cocker and Basseng, the Lamborghini man doing just enough to keep ninth. Cocker was on such a focussed late charge (a second a lap faster) that he hit the Murcielago square in the rear as they took the flag and Basseng slowed.

A good, solid and pretty clean race with some fine performances justly rewarded, but little in the way of real drama.

After the race, Biagi extended an invitation to teams who are yet to finalise driver line ups for Le Mans. “It is a dream for me as it is so special and if there is a team out there looking for a driver for Le Mans, especially with an Italian car, then I am ready!”

Mika Salo – after winning his sixth consecutive race - “It was tough to jump into the Maserati and be competitive but the team did a great job and adjusted the car a little more to my liking. My job was to keep the car on the track and to keep up a good pace.”

Mike Hezemans – “It was very close today. We had the best car in the first stint. I was lucky that Karl (Wendlinger) made a mistake and I passed by. We played a very conservative strategy on tyres all weekend so Jean Denis had only practiced on old tyres from Zhuhai, maybe that was too risky and maybe that’s why he spun so early in his stint.”

Bert Longin (smiling) – “No matter what we do Mike Hezemans is always there on the podium, equal on points with us, He’s always there!”

So Vitaphone Racing complete a Tourist Trophy double with their Maserati MC12s

GT2
This was a classic Porsche vs Ferrari clash with the trio of Porsche 997s (Tech 9, BMS Scuderia Italia and Ebimotors), taking on a sextet of Ferrari 430s (two car entries from Scuderia Ecosse, AF Corse and Edil Cris).

From the off there was a blindingly quick start from 2006 GT3 champion Sean Edwards in the #97 Tech 9 car, taking the class lead, jumping the usual fast starting king Andrew Kirkaldy and immediately making good his escape. Bruni meanwhile had lost out, down to fourth in class as Paolo Ruberti moved up and got in amongst the AF Corse boys.

Sean Edwards: “We had a great start and I could pull away pretty easily. It seemed obvious that Andrew (Kirkaldy) was struggling almost from the beginning but my biggest problem was the (SRT) Corvette, He was faster than me on the straight but then spun in front of me and allowed the Ferrari to close right up again. I let him go again and then he did it again.”

Nigel Mansell would start the #63 Scuderia Ecosse car but in truth this car would never feature – the lap times were somewhat blunted, the team’s tyres simply seeming not to do the job this weekend with one set seeming to come of the #62 car having been worn right down to the canvas, Kirkaldy and Mullen’s run was mighty given those circumstances.

The Ebimotors Porsche meanwhile was in trouble, the drivers side door apparently blowing off on the Hangar Straight, Marcello Zani pitting after a draughty lap or two with the team seemingly more concerned about a rear tyre than the missing door (they had no spare). The car rejoined and continued doorless but would not feature as a serious contender thereafter.

Back to the lead of the class at the start though and Kirkaldy was struggling, Ruberti was now right on his tail, helped by the leading three being delayed by a recovering Jet Alliance Aston Martin making its way by.

Ruberti grabbed second on lap 7 leaving Kirkaldy to fight a losing battle fending off the AF Corse pair of Bruni and Muller behind.

The Ferrari train was soon on the tail of the Tech 9 Porsche and on Lap 11, out of Becketts Ruberti dragged by the #99 car, Edwards unable to resist went from first to fourth in two corners as both of the AF Corse cars followed through by Stowe.

The order then was #52, 51, 50 with Ruberti holding off the two AF Corse cars until Lap 14 when Bruni squeezed by to lead the class. At this point it was a Ferrari 1,2,3,4 as Kirkaldy briefly found a way around Edwards, the Porsche man though recovered from a rather wide moment and retook the place as Kirkaldy’s understeer woes continued.

Up front it was now an AF Corse 1,2 as Muller hustled by Ruberti but the fiercest battle was now for fifth as Cressoni in the second, #53, Edil Cris car closed in on Kirkaldy with Malucelli’s BMS Porsche also well in touch. There was contact between the two Ferraris at Stowe, a half spin from Kirkaldy leaving him to rejoin from the grass almost collecting Ramos in the #2 Vitaphone Maserati.

Kirkaldy pitted almost immediately for Tim Mullen to try his luck in the evil handling #62. Cressoni pitted next in the #53 Edil Cris car for Rugolo to take the wheel and as the 40 minute mark was passed Mansell was next in to give Chris Niarchos a run in the #63 car.

50 minutes gone and the leading trio pitted, Muller first followed by Bruni and Ruberti next time around. That left Edwards to retake the lead, the Tech 9 man though still had to pit and had been losing a second a lap to the 430s. Malucelli was second at this point for a Porsche 1-2 as the halfway point approached.

Malucelli though pitted at 56 minutes with Edwards following suit a lap later.

The class positions at the hour mark were:

#50 Vilander
#51 Melo + 6 secs
#99 Machitski +38 seconds
#52 Pasini +5 seconds
#53 Rugolo + 27 seconds
#97 Collard + 10 seconds
#62 Mullen + 1 lap
#63 Niarchos +16.9
#101 Kuppens (G2 class Vertigo) +2 seconds

The man on the move was Emmanuel Collard, closing in fast on fifth place in the #97 Porsche. Sean Edwards meanwhile was explaining that: “There was a lot of pick up on the best GT2 lines, some of the bigger cars were taking some strange lines and that really blunted my attack.”

Melo meanwhile had closed in on Vilander and swept by to lead just after the 70 minute mark. Risi team mates in the ALMS Melo and Salo led GT2 and GT1 at that point.

Collard though was storming up the order and by the 75 minute mark had claimed fourth having overhauled both Rugolo and Machitski.

The final round of pitstops was now underway and collard was up to third in class.

One car in trouble though was the Vertigo, pulling off the circuit on the inside of the complex to retire.

Much bigger dramas though were apparent at the lead of the class, Melo firmly stuck in the gravel at Luffield after a clash with an Aston Martin (the #33 car). It was race over on the spot for #51 which seemed to have the win in the bag. Vilander now led Collard by a massive margin, enough to hand the car back to Dirk Muller and still keep a 14 second advantage over the still to pit Porsche.

Again the Porsches pitted almost together – Collard for Malucelli, Machitski for Edwards and Muller powered away at the front posting a 1:50.889 at this point to reinforce his advantage.

With 20 minutes to run it was Muller from Malucelli with Ruberti third and Edwards fourth, the Italian run Porsche though hit trouble, an off at Priory threw up the dust and the #97 car rumbled down the pitlane with one headlamp missing. A quick check from the crew though and Malucelli rejoined, Edwards though was closing in fast but was himself fending off a Kirkaldy / Cressoni battle right behind.

Into the last ten minutes and it looked inevitable that Edwards would grab the final podium slot, closing in fast on Malucelli. Through Bridge the two Porsches were nose to tail but the young Englishman had the edge on local knowledge and the Italian ran a little wide at Priory. That was enough to allow Edwards the room to grab the inside line under braking into Brooklands. The Tech 9 machine was ahead as the two Porsches rushed into Luffield One but there it all went wrong. The BMS man seemed to miss his braking point and hit the Tech 9 car on the rear right hand side as Edwards went to turn in. It seemed avoidable and it cost Edwards not only the podium place he had just claimed but also, by dint of the now charging Matteo Cressoni in the #53 Edil Cris Ferrari taking full advantage of the 997 on 997 action, it would cost Porsche a podium too.

Worse still for Edwards Andrew Kirkaldy too managed to close the gap before the #99 car could rejoin. Third had become sixth for Tech 9 and despite both the #62 Scuderia Ecosse Ferrari and the soon charging #99 both closing in fast on the BMS Porsche in the closing laps it would be the same order at the flag, albeit with Edwards just 0.156 of a second behind the Scuderia Ecosse man.

So a Ferrari 430 1,2,3 – Yet another AF Corse GT2 win and an impressive double podium finish for Edil Cris on their debut.

Andrew Kirkaldy: “I got jumped at the start by (Sean) Edwards but I decided to bide my time as I knew I would be able to pass him later. Unfortunately my tyres went off after four or five laps so it all became a lot of hard work. The car was really sliding around so from that point on I was a sitting duck. My second stint was better but still not as it should be. It’s a shame as the three cars in front of me were all within reach if my car had been its usual self. I’m frustrated as it’s hard to swallow going from pole position and having to settle for fifth place. This will just fire us up to do better though so hopefully we’ll come back strong in Bucharest.”

Sean Edwards: “Malucelli took me out, simple as that.”

Citation Cup

The opening round of the Citation Cup for gentlemen drivers attracted an eclectic 6 car entry of 5 GT1 cars (A pair of JMB run Maserati MC12s, An SRT Corvette C5-R, Kessel Racing Ferrari 575 and a Solution F run Care Racing Ferrari 550) and a singleton Dodge Viper running in class G2 alongside the usually lonely Gillet Vertigo. The Barwell Motorsport Aston Martin DBR9 was refused entry into this category by dint of Jonny Cocker’s driving status.

The sextet provided a boost to the grid and a bonus for spectators but in truth the race for the Citation Cup was somewhat downbeat affair. The cars are of course blindingly quick in a straight line but the confidence levels of some of their pilots meant that cornering speeds were somewhat less than the optimum meaning that they proved something of a challenge at times for some of the leading GT1s (and the quicker GT2s) to deal with. This was in effect a three class race.

The six though did prove to be remarkably reliable, five of the six were classified finishers with the winning SRT Corvette of Tom Cloet and Pertti Kuismanen finishing a respectable 15th overall after a race long run amidst the leading group of GT2s. The Ben Aucott / Joe Macari JMB Maserati MC12 was next up a couple of laps adrift with the sister JMB MC12 of Kutemann/ Waaijenberg third a further lap back.

Pertti Kuismanen – “It was a new car and a new track for me so a tough race for us but a great result to start the season.”

All in all a high quality 30 car field presents the FIA GT Championship in a healthy light at the start of the European season. There were battles aplenty in GT1 and GT2, the two hour format providing more of a sprint than a true endurance format but for many that provides a refreshingly different challenge than either the now almost universal 1 hour national GT format or the true endurance of the Le Mans Series.

Paul Slinger / Graham Goodwin
with thanks to Peter May and Julian Roberts