Maranello, 9 April

A busy day of free practice has just come to an end at the HTTT Le Castellet circuit, in the run up to the first round of this season’s Le Mans Series, the famous racing championship born out of the Le Mans 24 Hours and this year is its twelfth season. Giancarlo Fisichella, Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro’s reserve driver, made his GT2 racing debut, completing around a dozen laps, although as planned, his workload will increase tomorrow, compared to his team-mates, Jean Alesi and Toni Vilander. The crew was seventh fastest, at the wheel of one of the three F430s entered by the Italian AF Corse team and the general view of this first day of practice was summed up by Fisichella after the afternoon session: “taking into account the fact the tyres were very worn and the car had a significant fuel load, everything went well. A bit of oversteer and a nervous rear end meant it was hard to do better than seventh, but the feeling is good and tomorrow we can expect to have a lot of work to do on track.”



The other Ferraris also did well: the Andrew Kirkaldy and Tim Mullen F430 dominated the morning session, just ahead of its AF Corse sister car, driven by Jaime Melo and Gimmi Bruni and the Porsche 997 of Marc Lieb and Richard Lietz. At the end of the second run, the Lieb and Lietz Porsche came out on top, ahead of the third AF Corse F430, in the hands of Luis Perez Companc and Matias Russo and the Aston Martin of Robert Bell and Darren Turner.

Tomorrow, Fisichella and his team-mates tackle the third and final free practice session, followed by the all-important qualifying session, in preparation for the eight hour marathon which gets underway at 11 on Sunday, ending at 7 pm.