Unlucky debut for aabar abu dhabi Villorba Corse 'Racing with Ferrari” in the 2012 International GT Open at Portimao
With a few laps to go, in race-1 the 458 GT2 of Andrea Montermini and Juan Manuel Lopez was faultlessly forced to retire because of a contact with a lapped car. Now the Italian squad is expecting a positive result in Sunday's race-2
It was a very unfortunate start of the season for aabar abu dhabi Villorba Corse "Racing with Ferrari" in the first round of 2012 International GT Open, underway at the Portimao circuit, in Portugal.
With a few laps to go, in race-1 the 458 GT2 of Andrea Montermini and Juan Manuel Lopez was forced to retire with a trouble on its left rear tyre, because of a previous contact caused by a lapped car. At that point, Montermini had managed to recover to fourth in Super GT class after his Argentine teammate had done everything possible in wet conditions, with rain fell on track before the green light.
Indeed, the race was started under safety-car for a couple of laps. Later, with 40 minutes to go, Lopez wasthe first top-driver to enter the pits for mandatory driver change. Montermini was back on track in 22ndplace, starting a very good recovery despite an additional stop for dry tyres. The fast Italian driver fromModena regained tenth place quite soon and then he was fourth in the main class when the contact with alapped Ford GT put him out of the race with no faults.
“Certainly - says Raimondo Amadio, aabar abu dhabi Villorba Corse team principal -, for us it was avery unlucky day. In the first laps we suffered the track conditions; then everything was going well, but westill had to make a tyre change. In the final laps, the radio broke and after a few minutes we had thatcontact, for which nobody could blame Andrea. It was a pity, because after a fast recovery we would havegrabbed a very good fourth place for the GT2 standings. Anyway, congratulations to those who won, weare going to try to do better in tomorrow race.”
“Unfortunately - says Montermini -, it is already hard. Our championship began with a big handicap andcertain situations did not help us at all. Now we must work very hard to delete this zero in the standings.Probably all night. Tomorrow we will do everything to bring home the best possible result.”
International GT Open calendar: 27-29 apr. Portimao (POR); 25-27 may Nurburgring (DEU); 22-24 june Spa(BEL); 13-15 july Brands Hutch (GBR); 20-22 july Le Castellet (FRA); 7-9 sept. Budapest (HUN); 28-30 sept.Monza (ITA); 2-4 nov. Barcellona (SPA)