For 2024, we have entered for the entire season in 2 race series: ERL and CER1.
Mugello Classics was the 1st Peter auto event in 2024 and benefitted from great sunny weather (a few years ago we had snow…). The plan was to share both cars with my middle son Mathias.
Instead of racing our trusted Fujifilm Porsche 996 GT3 RSR in the ERL race, we entered a car that we recently acquired: a 2008 Ferrari F430 GTC which won the French championship in 2009 and has quite a special nose livery: a fire blazing bull nose…
We wanted to see how a Ferrari 430 – which we never drove before – would compare to a Porsche. The F430 was prepared by Maranello based Pastorelli Classic Racing. After some decent qualifying which put us in the middle of the GT2C class, the 1st 40 minute race went well until a nonfunctioning pit-stop button caused the engine to stall and needed a reset. So we lost about 40 seconds which caused us to finish 7th in class with lap times that were only 1 to 2 seconds of the front runners. So, not bad for the 1st race! In the 2nd race we were lying top 3 in class but we didn’t do our pit-stop during a FCY flag (I wanted to give my son Mathias equal driving time) so we lost some time and finished 6th in class with lap times (2Min 00) that were now well within the other cars in our class.
The F430 is a pleasure to drive and it makes an amazing sound. Compared to the Porsche, it is nimbler, better balanced and more precise. Straight line speed is very similar/equal but, being a non “wide-body” model, it has the disadvantage of smaller tires compared to the Porsche thereby having less corner grip. For the next race at the Spa Classic event (May 17-19), we will continue to run the 430 but are also contemplating to enter the 996 RSR….:-)
For the CER1 race, we have entered the very rare 1967 Lola T70 Mk3B spyder. Only 4 such cars were built and ours is the only one with FIA HTP papers. Last time we ran the car was 2018 so the car was very new to us while we also made changes to the engine (side-draft carbs). We planned to test the T70 at Cremona prior to Mugello but a broken input-shaft in the 1st test session forced us to abandon our test plans. When at Mugello, we found – during practice and qualifying – that the engine was not delivering power in a linear fashion and that the car was heavily understeering. So, the OC Racing team who looks after the car made some setup changes for the 1 hour race but we had to abandon after about 35 minutes with engine issues. So, a DNF with the T70 and we clearly have some work to do to fix the engine issues and come-up with a better setup for the Spa Classic event !!
