Maranello, 8 August

Gimmi Bruni and Jaime Melo took victory in yesterday’s American Le Mans Series race, the Mid-Ohio Sport Car Challenge at the eponymous circuit in Lexington. This is the Risi Competizione’s third win out of the six rounds held so far this season and promotes the team to second in the classification for the category. The two Ferraris entered by the Houston-based squad were the quickest of all the GT cars on track, while thanks to a great overtaking move from Melo, the #62 F430 retook the race lead and kept it to the chequered flag, in a race full of passing moves and traffic towards the end during a Safety Car period. The other car, #61, driven by Toni Vilander and Giancarlo Fisichella was forced to retire after a collision with Ed Brown’s Ferrari. It happened in a fight for fifth place, after the race had been compromised when too many places were lost during a pit stop: the F430, with Fisichella on board, was put into a spin by one of the two cars entered by Extreme Speed Motorsports. “I am very disappointed, “ commented the Italian when he returned to the pits. “It was a shame to be knocked out just when I was fighting to make up places lost during the pit stop because of a problem with a tyre. But now I am just thinking about doing well next time I get the opportunity to race in this series again, because it really is an amazing experience.” Fifth was the other Ferrari of Scott Sharp and Johannes van Overbeek, with second and third places on the podium going to the Corvette ZR1 of Oliver Gavin and Olivier Beretta and the BMW M3 of Bill Auberlen and Tommy Milner.
In just two weeks time, over the weekend of 22 August, the round of the series takes place at the Road America circuit at Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.