Don’t be deceived by the 7th position conquered by Graham Nash’s Saleen -  Gabriele Lancieri managed to bring the car up to 3rd overall during his driving stint.

Gabriele’s three day adventure in Dubai didn’t start off on a good note. Due to serious technical problems, Gabriele wasn’t able to participate in the free practice session on Wednesday. Even if the Saleen qualified in 5th on the grid, Lancieri only managed to do 7 laps during the qualifying.

The race with the # 28 Saleen  started off well. Paolo  Ruberti was able to make a position and finished his stint in 4th place .The car was then given to Gabriele who slowly lowered his times and climbed up one position: to 3rd .

Third driver; Rocky Augusta, lost position and the crew had to be content with  seventh place in the GT category with 4 lap gap from the winner.

Gabriele Lancieri

“To be honest I don’t know if I should be happy with these 2 points that the Graham Nash team and I summoned up for the first time or if I should be sad for the great opportunity that we lost. I only thought about pushing hard when I got in the car because I knew that we would later be penalized by a slower driver. I pushed so hard that I was in third place when I finished the second hour of the race. It was an extremely positive result. Once again, I battled it out with more prestigious cars, like I did in Imola. We just need to take a look at how many km of testing the Maserati did this year. They did about 13000 and I did zero! I’m very satisfied with my performance. But seeing that in the GT category you don’t compete alone; you need to count on fast and well prepared team-mates.

Having lost that podium burns almost as much as the heat that we had in the cockpit today.”