Kevin Ceccon is the new reigning champion of Auto GP. The young italian talent, who turned 18 just some weeks ago, closed the year in the best possible fasion, hitting the most important target of his season.The seal to the most important success came in the last race of the championship, held in Mugello.Kevin, who arrived at the last race with a seven points advantage on Luca Filippi, his closest rival, contested an amazing race showing both talent and a very cool minded attitude, acting like a much more experienced driver would have done.
The first odd moment of his race came at the start, when Afanasiev stalled his car right in front of him: Kevin avoided the Russian's still car, but doing this he lost some ground, dropping to P8 after starting from fifth place
.In the meantime, Filippi made the most of the situation recovering to fourth and starting to make pressure on Crestani for third place, a situation that was going to make the title fight a real thriller.Anyway Ceccon's reaction was very prompt: he started to put pressure on Venturini, who was in seventh place in front of him, and on lap 7 he passed the Durango driver with a mastely move at the San Donato corner entry, grabbing two further points that secured him the Auto GP crown.So Ceccon became the 2011 Auto GP champion, succeeding to Romain Grosjean: for the frenchman the Auto GP title represented the stepping stone to get back in GP2, championship that he then clinched in dominant fashion this year. Kevin has the same aim for the future, but compared to the French driver he's much younger, something that makes him one of the most interesting talents in International Motorsport.
Kevin Ceccon: "Winning the title was an incredibile emotion, I think that I still have to realize what I did. After taking the lead in Oschersleben I dreamed about this moment, but living it is incredible because I had such strong opponents. Today the race was particularly tense, because I knew I had to keep an eye on Luca and Sergei. Before the race I asked the team to give infos just from the pit wall, and some very basical ones: my championship position, laps remaining, and where Filippi and Afanasiev were placed. So I knew everything about the situation, and at the start it wasn’t looking too good. Then I managed to pass Venturini and Crestani kept Luca behind: winning by just three points makes the emotion even bigger, now I just want to celebrate"
