GT Ferraris Do Well at GT Open at Paul Ricard

Report from on site by Jean-Bernard Héros

The 3rd round of the International GT Open took place on June 10 & 11, 2017 at the famous and fast Paul Ricard circuit in southern France. Of the 28 cars present, we found five Ferrari 488 GT3s. Two races were offered, one on Saturday afternoon and the other on Sunday afternoon, both with sunny and warm weather.

RACE 1

During qualifying, Miguel Ramos in the 488 GT3 Spirit of Race team #488 488 GT3 took the pole position with a time of 2’03”957. At the start of the race, Farfus in the BMW M6 GT3 took the lead, while Miguel Ramos’ co-driver Mikkel Mac was in third. On the second lap, Mac passed Rob Bell in the Mc Laren 650 S GT3 and started to chase Farfus. The show went on until the driver change, where Miguel Ramos took the wheel and was in the lead when Farfus had to abandon the race. After 1 hour and 12 minutes, the checkered flag marked the victory for Ferrari and Miguel Ramos and Mikkel Mac. It was the first win of this year for this crew.

The #48 Spirit of Race/Kaspersky Motorsport team with drivers Alexander Moiseev and Davide Rizzo won the GT-AM category.

RACE 2

At the start, Andrea Caldarelli in the #5 488 GT3 from SF Racing kept his advantage of pole position. By lap 10, Caldarelli’s advantage has grown to 5 seconds but in the end it was Alexander Moiseev and Davide Rizzo in the #48 488 GT3 which gained another success in the GT-AM class.

Chart of results, with teams, drivers and the all-important chassis numbers will be in the August 1 issue of Cavallino (subscribe here). Images from Jean-Bernard Héros.