Curva Grande

Curva Grande

The season won�t be all red!

The podium was a sea of red after the opening round of the 2003 FIA GT

Championship season, at Barcelona. BMS Scuderia Italia claimed the top three

positions overall, while JMB won the N-GT class chased by two Maranello

Concessionaires Team Veloqx Ferraris. Scuderia Italia�s pairing of Matteo Bobbi

and Thomas Biagi went on to win the first five races of the season, virtually

clinching the championship by the halfway point. Sweeps don�t get any cleaner

than that.

Despite the omen of Sunday�s Australian Grand Prix, I don�t think that the 2004

season will be quite so benign to the Ferrari teams in either of the FIA GT

categories.

Born Again

Saleen and Lister, rejuvenated during the winter season, looked fast, strong and

purposeful during the FIA tests at Monza last week. Uwe Alzen blasted his way to

the top of the time sheets in Franz Konrad�s Vitaphone Saleen S7-R chased hotly

by Tommy Erdos in a Ray Mallock Saleen, and by the Dutch ace Tom Coronel who

replaces Jamie Campbell-Walter as lead driver in Laurence Pearce�s Lister

Storm GT team. I will be surprised if Alzen, Erdos and Coronel don�t win a couple

of races apiece, leaving Scuderia Italia, GPC Squadra Corse and JMB Racing to

share five or six victories between themselves.

Safety in Numbers

Numerically, Ferrari dominates the top GT class. Three BMS Scuderia Italia

Ferrari 550s, built by Prodrive and leased from Care Racing, head the list, but they

will come under heavy attack from two JMB Racing Ferrari 575s, and two more

from the newly formed GPC Squadra Corse Ferrari team owned by GianPaulo

Coppi.

Interestingly, the Scuderia Italia and JMB Ferraris race on Michelin tyres, still

supposed to be the best, while Coppi�s team has a major contract with Pirelli (as

will the Maserati team, when it joins the series midway through the season).

Franz Konrad has switched from Dunlop to Pirelli, while RML and Lister remain

faithful to Dunlop.

New Boy

GT champion Bobbi has a new co-driver, the Swiss Gabriele Gardel, from the

Freisinger Porsche team, following the defection of Biagi to the Barron Connor

Ferrari 575 team contesting the Le Mans Endurance Series. Fabrizio Gollin and

Luca Capellari, unlucky to win only once last season, might prove to be the

stronger pairing, but don�t discount the lively trio Lilian Bryner, Enzo Calderari and

Stefano Livio, second in the Spa 24-Hours and second again at Monza last

October.

575 Tale

JMB didn�t turn up for the Monza test, but Jean-Michel Bouresche has confirmed

two Ferrari entries and assures organiser Stephane Ratel that all is well; Bert

Longin is the only driver so far named. Coppi, Bouresche�s former co-director,

went back to Italy to form his own team employing Fabio Babini and Philipp Peter

in one Ferrari 575, Emanuel Naspetti and Joel Camathias in the other.

GPC�s one Ferrari present at Monza was about 1.7 seconds off the pace of the top

three cars, and I am not convinced that the 575 is going to demonstrate a great

superiority. Its early victory last year, at Estoril (Babini and Peter) was due in part to

the strange decision of the FIA not to impose the 50 kg weight penalty which the

regulations demand of new entries, to the great annoyance of Augusto Mensi�s

Scuderia Italia team which duly took its revenge at Monza.

One day, My Prints will Come

The mid-engined Saleens, sooner or later, were going to become regular winners

and I believe their time has come. Last year they shed their weight and air

restrictor penalties, applied because Steve Saleen hadn�t made 25 cars, but

Konrad�s team was blighted by gearbox breakages, consequent on changing

from transverse to longitudinal installation. Prior to Monza, Konrad�s team

completed a 5,000 kilometre endurance run without any trace of gearbox wear.

Uwe Alzen, a former Porsche factory driver, and Michael Bartels look to be a very

strong, professional pairing. Vitaphone is not a mobile network, by the way, but a

medical appliance which monitors heartbeat, blood pressure and other vital signs

of life. A good sponsor, says Konrad, who has high hopes of his second Saleen

assigned to Walter Lechner Jr and Toni Seiler. The popular Austrian has just

terminated a very unhappy association with sponsor Dark Dog, which left him

US$750,000 out of pocket! There�s not much charity in motor racing, unfortunately,

but that�s a staggering sum of money for a small, private team to lose.

Best Laid Plans
Konrad Motorsport will also be contesting the Le Mans Endurance Series, when

Konrad will himself co-drive with Lechner and Seiler, and he has Achim Stroth

managing the team. Stroth will be recalled as the longtime manager of the

Kremer Porsche team, who then joined Giovanni Lavaggi for a lean spell.

Ray Mallock�s teams are always impeccable, and I would expect to see Tommy

Erdos and Mike Newton running regularly with the top group. Graham Nash left it

to the last minute to enter one of his two Saleens, without naming any drivers, and

he too will also tackle the LMES.

Dark Star

A black storm cloud frequently shrouded Laurence Pearce�s pits last season, but

at Monza the Lister team was all sweetness and light. The 2003 season was

difficult in all sorts of ways, the team badly overstretched as it developed the

Storm LMP prototype while keeping a sometimes unruly GT team under control,

but Pearce gives the impression of one who has come through the maelstrom

stronger then ever.

He and Jamie Campbell-Walter have parted company amicably after a five-year

relationship that ended under strain. Both parties agreed that "it�s time to move

on", Pearce adding that "we were beginning to get on each other�s nerves a bit.

We were arguing over silly things." He is not just pleased, he is thrilled to have

signed Tom Coronel for two years.

Maximum Attack
They�re both racers of the best sort. "Tommy did a 1:44.1 with a bit of traffic, but he

did a did a string of 44s which is 1.5 seconds quicker than the car went last year,

in exactly the same trim" says Pearce. "He is on the limit, exploring the

boundaries, which is where I want my lead driver to be all the time. This shows us

how to develop the car. It�s going to go faster and faster this year. I am very

confident about the Lister Prototype, too. Tommy will drive it with Nathan Kinch,

and I really do expect results with it."

Campbell-Walter won the British GT Championship with Julian Bailey in 1999,

and won the FIA GT Championship superbly with Bailey in 2000. But, for the last

three seasons he has been allocated a whole raft of co-drivers, Coronel once or

twice, Mike Jordan for a memorable win at the Nurburgring, financial backer

Nicolas Springer in 2002 and Nathan Kinch in 2003.

New Direction

I suspect that the thought of driving with Paul Knapfield in 2004 spelled another

year of unrewarding graft for Campbell-Walter, who must feel that he needs to

move on to give his professional career a kick-start. Mike Jankowski�s Creation

Autosportif team has a very different atmosphere and the DBA-Zytek is a proven

winner, a real threat to the pukka LMP900s in the Le Mans Endurance Series.

Happy Chappie
Coronel, middle name Romeo, really doesn�t care who Pearce allocates as his

co-driver. "I�ve always got on well with Laurence, he�s a great boss and I trust him

to give me the best. If I have to do all the hard work, that�s great!"

The smiley Dutchman�s Japanese programme with Honda fell apart after a single

season ("the boss went to prison, you know"), so Pearce has given him a

tremendous life-line in Europe. It�s probably not so well paid, but it�s a whole lot

better than the Zandvoort job centre.

Quick Change

Coronel keeps his job with the Carly Motors BMW team (always racing last year�s

cars, unfortunately) and will have to do some super quick changes when he gets

to the GT podium. The European Touring Car Championship cars will be

warming-up for the next race, and I have visions of Tommy stripping off his black

Lister overalls and donning a white BMW suit while on the rostrum. Either that, or

his twin brother Tim will have to appear on the podium (or do the BMW warm-up)!

Pearce insists that Coronel will drive the first and third hours, "of course", as is

customary for the lead driver, leaving Knapfield to drive the middle stint.

As a PS, Carly Motors has taken Paulein Zwaart, daughter of Klaus, as its second

BMW driver for the season, replacing Duncan Huisman. Duncan, meanwhile, is

on the roster for Creation Autosportif, as is Nicolas Minassian, either of whom

would keep Campbell-Walter on his toes�which is exactly what he wants.

360 Degrees

Turning briefly to the N-GT category, the absence of JMB Racing and Maranello

Concessionaires Team Veloqx Ferrari 360s creates a huge hole in the entry list.

There have been rumours of �politics� within the Ferrari camp, averted by the late

entry of a 360 GTC by the new GPC Squadra Corse team for Christian Pescatori

and Fabrizio de Simone, two men who deserve absolutely to be in the top

category, going for outright wins.

Only they can keep Manfred Freisinger�s Porsche team honest, in a field that now

has just eight entries. Three of them are brand-new, Yukos (Russian oil)

sponsored GT3 RSRs with factory backing, and Michelin tyres to go with the deal.

Stephane Ortelli, champion for the last two years, has Emmanuel Collard as his

co-driver, Lucas Luhr and Sascha Maassen share the second car, Nicolaj

Fomenko and Alexei Vasiliev the third.

Top Porsche engineer Norbert Singer was keeping an eye on the Freisinger team

at Monza, one of the new 911s bothering its drivers with a vibration, and is likely to

be seen on occasions during his retirement year, most certainly at the Spa 24-

Hours.

Blackpool Rock

A brand-new, factory built TVR T400R made a surprise appearance with the RSR

Racing team, driven by Nigel Greensall and Lawrence Tomlinson. They are

regulars in the Radical Championship, Greensall the champion in fact, and they

have not forsaken the little motorcycle engined cars.

But, in their spare weekends, they will contest the Le Mans Endurance Series

and a couple of rounds of the FIA GT Championship, hence their wide-eyed

appearance at Monza, preparing for the first LMES race on May 9. The TVR was

brand-new, painted Chameleon Orange, a colour I�d find it difficult to admire, and

neither had ever been to the Monza Autodrome so their exploratory times are sure

to be bettered next time out.

6	Stefano Livio/
	Lilian Bryner/