Minutes, hours, days, months, seasons, years, decades, centuries………..all will pass eventually, so too for motor sport. It seems only yesterday that I was heading for Germany and the first round of a brave new Championship. Hockenheim was the location and April 1997 was the time. Well like me the FIA GT Championship has got a little older, if not wiser and yesterday, after 132 races and 13 seasons the affair ended. For next year it will be all change but for now let's have a quick look at the finale held yesterday at Zolder.
Crossing the line is the Maserati MC12 of Andrea Bertolini and Michael Bartels……………Champions for the third time in four years.
SpeedHunters made a film about the Italian earlier in the year………….
http://www.speedhunters.com/?p=2586
So much for GT1, in GT2 Porsche split their two contenders for the driver's title, Richard Westbrook and Emmanuel Collard to maximise their chances of success. The gamble paid off with Westbrook taking a win and a title.
The race was actually won by the third string MC12 driven by 2003 Champion, Matteo Bobbi, who with Alessandro Pier Guidi finished some 20 seconds up the road from the pack.
Second place in the race and second place in the Championship went to the Pekaracing Corvette driven by the irrepressible duo, Mike Hezemans and Anthony Kumpen. As local heroes they enjoyed big support from the partisan crowd.
Third place overall in the race was good enough to see the Vitaphone team leaders finish on top.
GT2 Champion and race winner was Richard Westbrook, partnered for this race by Marco Holzer.
Second place in GT2 was the BMS Scuderia Italia Ferrari F430 of Matteo Malucelli and Paolo Ruberti.
Final place on the podium went to Rob Bell and Andrew Kirkaldy in the F430 of CRS Racing.
Pre race favourites for the event and the title, the AF Corse F430 of Toni Villander and Gianmaria Bruni lost out as a result carrying too much success ballast………100 kgs! Even a 2010 spec Ferrari could not make up the performance gap. Fourth place was all they could muster.
The 2010 GT1 cars fought a good battle for the first part of the race but the Nissan GT-R of Darren Turner and Michael Krumm retired with overheating brakes. The Ford GT of Bas Leinders and Renaud Kuppens fell out first though………..the local team's demise was described by an over excited commentator as a "National Disaster" …………………
In 2010 the two classes split………at least that is the plan as the GT1 class achieves World Championship status, so in theory this site could become familiar next year.
GT2 gets its own stand-alone competition.
But that is over the hills and far away…………..salute the 2009 Champions.
John Brooks
Additional image copyright and courtesy of FIA GT/DPPI
OFFICIAL SPEEDHUNTERS SUPPLIERS
Now this is what I call Speedhunting! Fantastic read!
John, could you help explain how the FIA GT championship will change in the 2010 season? I understand that there will be two separate classes for GT1 and GT2 with GT1 now having world status again.
For the Spa 24, are GT1, GT2, and GT3 gonna share the track at once? And, since the GT1 class has been rejuvenated, can this mean anything for the ALMS, ELMS, or Asian Le Mans series?
I thought GT1 was dying a slow death. Hopefully not but GT2 is where the world's best GT racing currently is.
That first picture of that Maserati MC12 spittin fire is such an awsome picture.
argh.. should have been there as Zolder is only 10 mins from my home....
John, can you expand any more on the protest lodged by PK Sport against the Vitaphone team? Something about race-fixing is all I saw, but Autosport didn't write much more about it.
Well, Vitaphone has 3 maserati´s running. Only two are permitted as far as the rules are concerned. They enter the thirth one merly to block and steal points from the competition. Further more, A.Kumpen´s pole position was taken away Sunday morning, because he had done his fast lap under yellow, while the day before, when he did set the time it was green. Teamorders have been the rule at Maserati during the entire championship. I do not regard them as worthy winners this year.
I'd Loved the Nissan GTR........very cool car
Nice race Between the GT-R; GT-40; RSV-670, and maybe the C6R with a more Stock chasis we cold have the next year;
Great read, a huge fan of the GTR as well.