Maranello, 14 January

The 2011 race season has got underway with the sixth running of the Dubai 24 Hours endurance race. This year no less eighty four cars took part. The packed field were soon battling it out on the Emirate track, trying for the best grid position for the race which got underway yesterday at 14h00. The front row was an all Lamborghini Gallardo affair with pole going to the Blancpain Reiter car, ahead of the one entered by Gulf Team First.

In the A6 Class for GT cars there were two F430 GT2s entered by the Italian AF Corse team, but unfortunately they were a long way back, partly because of traffic caused by less competitive cars: car number four was 26th driven by Italian Ferrari Challenge driver Lorenzo Case and his co-drivers Marco Cioci, Piergiuseppe Perazzini and Poland’s Michael Broniszewski, one place ahead of car number six, crewed by the father and son team of Alexander Talkanitsa Sr and Alexander Talkanitsa Jnr, as well as Alessandro Garofano and Marco Frezza. The third AF Corse F430 GT2 with a crew made up of Michael Waltrip, Robert Kauffman, Rui Aguas and Matt Griffin, was forced to pull out before the start, as it was damaged during the warm-up.

At the end of the 24 Hours the result was a complete turnaround for the Case-Cioci-Perazzini-Broniszewski F430 GT2 as despite its poor grid position, it managed to claw its way up the order, making the most of the AF Corse car’s potential during the night, to come home a well deserved second right behind the BMW Z4 (Need for Speed Schumbert 1.) Eleventh place for the other Ferrari (Talkinatsa Snr and Jnr – Garofano-Frezza) who put in a consistent performance, without however managing to make it to the top places.