News July 7 2006

$2.8M FXX debuts on the track in Belgium

More than 400 Ferraris, including Formula One cars, road cars, historic and classic cars, gathered at the Spa-Francorchamps race track in Belgium at the weekend (24-25 June 2006), but star of the show was the Ferrari FXX at its first public outing.

The $2.8 million super car that has turned 29 owners into test drivers to help Ferrari develop its next super car. Exclusively for track use, the FXX owners will drive their cars on race tracks in Europe and America in coming months, collecting data for Ferrari as they blast their 800 bhp V12 cars around the track.

The Ferrari Racing Days event also included the Ferrari F430 competing in the European Ferrari Challenge Pirelli Trophy and historic cars racing in the Shell Ferrari Historic Challenge. In addition, there were sessions of untimed laps for historic privately owned Ferrari Formula One cars run by the F1 Clienti department.

In the one-make series, the main class saw victory go to Ange Barde (Modena Cars Racing) in race-1, when the Frenchman crossed the finish line ahead of Frederic Bouvy (team Baron) and John Bosch (Barron Racing/Kroymans.) The other race ended with a win for Bouvy who beat Michael Cullen (Rossocorsa) and Ross Kaiser (Ferrari GB Dealer Team.)

 Ettore Contini (Kessel Racing) took top honours in the first race for the gentlemen drivers in the Shell Cup, winning ahead of Francois Labhardt (Modena Motors) and Philippe Prette (Auto Palace/Star Rent Competition.) The finishing order in race-2 saw Labhardt take it from Prette and Contini respectively second and third.

In the category for the 360 Modena, which are still allowed to compete for this year alongside the F430, both races were won by Bjorn Grossmann (Autohaus Gohm/G2 Racing.)

The Shell Ferrari Historic Challenge, the championship for historic Ferraris, which - graciously - has also allowed Maseratis to compete since 1999, was on at the same time. Victories among the single-seaters in grid A went to the 1955 Maserati 250 F of Thomas Bscher, while the 1958 Maserati 450 S of the German driver was victorious in the grid-B races for sports prototypes and GT cars fitted with drum brakes. As for group C (cars with disc brakes,) the 1981 Ferrari 512 BB LM of Massimo Sordi came out the winner in both events.

The European Ferrari Challenge Pirelli Trophy will be back on track over the weekend of 9th July at Monza, running alongside the Italian series, while the Shell Ferrari Historic Challenge has its fourth round of the season over the weekend of 30th July at Paul Ricard (France) again alongside the European one-make series.