Silverstone, 5th May 2006

The English Silverstone circuit is this weekend hosting the opening rounds of this year's FIA GT Championship and the European Ferrari Challenge Pirelli Trophy series.

In the Grand Touring event, the GT2 class is particularly popular, and it also sees the debut of the Maranello marque's F430 GTC, up against the Porsche, Nissan and Panoz cars. The Ferraris are entered by the AF Corse team (crewed by Salo/Aguas and Bobbi/Melo,) Scuderia Ecosse (Kinch/Kirkaldy and Niarchos/Mullen) and JMB Racing (Sugden/Alexander-David and Kutemann/Gosse.)

There is a record number of entrants for the Prancing Horse one-make series, which also features the Shell Cup category for gentlemen drivers and features the new F430 Challenge car, alongside some 360 Modenas which are in their final year of competition. There are over fifty cars entered with drivers from no less than fourteen countries. Ireland's Michael Cullen (Rossocorsa) will be out to defend his continental title from 2005 in the main class, while also worthy of note is the presence of two lady drivers, the Spaniard Maria de Villota (Baron Service) and France's Carine Sicart (Ferrari West Europe.)


The event gets underway tomorrow, Saturday 6th May, with qualifying for the FIA GT and the first events in the Challenge.

The European Ferrari Challenge Pirelli Trophy will get ample coverage on the television magazine programme "Ferrari Racing," which goes out internationally, starting in June. The Silverstone weekend is also being covered by host broadcasters, Radio 5 Live and BBC Radio London, as well as a network of sixty local UK radio stations which will cover the entire season for the European one-make series.