Risi Competizione s No. 62 Ferrari F430GT Took On History
St. Petersburg, FL
Apr 02, 2007
Interfuture Media
Risi Competizione s No. 62 Ferrari F430GT took on history and a field of top competitors to win the GT2 Class at the Acura Sports Car Challenge American Le Mans Series race at St. Petersburg, Florida yesterday. Piloted by Mika Salo and Jaime Melo, Risi Competizione s F430GT Ferrari won the team s fourth race in a row in the ALMS GT2 category; Risi Competizione won the last two races of the 2006 ALMS season (Mosport and Laguna Seca) and has captured the first two races of the 2007 season (12 Hours of Sebring and St. Petersburg). Second in class was the No. 45 Porsche 911 GT3 RSR driven by Johannes van Overbeek and Jorg Bergmeister for Flying Lizard Motorsports; third went to the No. 21 Panoz Esperante GTLM of of Panoz Team PTG with Bill Auberlen and Joey Hand behind the wheel.
“It was a very good win on a very tough course, ” said Team Managing Director Giuseppe Risi. “Mika and Jaime did a great job staying out of trouble and moving to the front. Jaime did a fabulous job in the first part of the race and Mika is a phenomenal finisher. The two of them together are an excellent driving team. The Michelin tires were great for us again. The fans can see the rivalry developing between Porsche and Ferrari. It s going to be a very, very competitive year. ” The sparkling finish for the Rosso Corso 430GT Ferrari of Risi Competizione at the St. Petersburg race meeting was in stark contrast to the way the weekend started for the team. On Friday, with just 3 minutes left in the morning practice session, Jose Maria Lopez, driving the No. 61 Ferrari 430GT with Nic Jonsson, a Ferrari of Silicon Valley/Giacomo Mattioli racecar entered by Risi Competizione, had an on course incident that put the car into the wall, doing significant damage and taking it out of action for the weekend.
Street courses are their own unique types of circuits as Risi Competizione Team Engineer Rick Mayer noted. Because they are used for regular traffic for 51 weeks a year, and turned into a race track only for a short week; street circuits are tough, uneven, and unforgiving of mistakes. “You can t do anything about these anomalies but you need to take these items into account when you make changes to the car as these anomalies will upset the car, ” Mayer said. “We haven t been to the St. Petersburg street circuit. Street circuits are driver s tracks, and we have great drivers. That will be our ultimate advantage. You get very little track time and drivers are learning the track even in qualifying and still in the race. ”
A confident Mayer did not mention one key fact: A Ferrari has never won on an ALMS street circuit. Tomas Enge (No. 31 Ferrari 430GT for Petersen White Lightning) made a prescient comment before the race started when he said that “The track is quite challenging. There are places that are more slippery than the others so you have to be careful where you push….. you can t get aggressive here. ”
