Race Track Chad Racing – Silverstone FIA GT3 Rounds 1 & 2

Having made the decision to enter the 2010 FIA GT3 Championship in the closing weeks of 2009, Chad Racing found itself in the somewhat surprising position of being the only Ferrari team as the season opener at Silverstone approached.

This would have advantages however; namely in the form of a close working relationship and data and tech-exchanges with Kessel Racing, the constructor of the Ferrari 430 Scuderia. Effectively, this makes Chad the ‘Kessel works team’ in the series. The first fruits of this co-operation would arrive in the week before the first meeting, when several new updates were received from Kessel; meaning that Chad would have the most up-to-date GT3 Ferraris outside of the Kessel cars.

Drivers for Chad’s two cars were signed up, but a late change of plans meant that only one car would compete in the first races; the other driver pairing preferring to undertake more testing before joining in the series at Brno.

There would be a very Italian flavour to the #87 Scuderia, as the drivers were revealed to be Giacomo Petrobelli and Diego Alessi.

London-based Italian Petrobelli, although the amateur driver of the two, has previously raced Ferraris in the LMS and the International GT Open; whereas 39-year old Roman Alessi has raced in all four previous seasons of the championship, but in other marques – most recently the Corvette. He too has Ferrari racing experience, however, having campaigned a 360 in the Italian GT Championship.

Having enjoyed a fruitful test at Dijon in the run up to Silverstone, on Michelin rubber, the team made its way to the Northamptonshire circuit with a quiet confidence.

29 cars made it through scrutineering on the Friday, including the Chad Ferrari, and would take part in the day’s two one-hour practice sessions. 41 laps of the brand-new 3.666 mile Grand Prix Circuit were completed over the 120 minutes by Giacomo and Diego with no problems encountered and with the car sitting quite happily in the 2:07s by the end of the day.

“The updates have made the car much stiffer at the rear,” said Giacomo. “It’s much better than when we tested and we’ve now found a really good balance.”

Saturday was when the weekend would get serious, starting with the two qualifying sessions early in the morning.

Giacomo was out first for that afternoon’s race, but things didn’t go exactly to plan and by the end of the 20 minutes he found himself with a 12th placed starting position, having managed only a 2:07.990; “That was terrible,” he said later. “We got the tyre pressures all wrong and we could have been quite a bit higher up.”

And it didn’t get much better for Diego in the second session which followed soon afterwards, after the car developed an ABS problem. He had set a 2:05.073 on his first flying lap – by far the car’s quickest time of the meeting so far and an indication that there was more to come – but he was unable to get anywhere close to this time again and called it a day after six laps. He would also be starting from the sixth row for Sunday’s race, albeit in 11th place.

Despite warnings of wretched weather across the UK, it was still dry and occasionally warm by the time the FIA GT3 grid assembled at two o’clock and there was no indication that rain would fall.

The Chad Ferrari gained a place even before the race got underway after the #17 Graff Racing Corvette was pushed off the grid having refused to fire up; but Giacomo was fired up after the disappointment of qualifying and was ready for the lights when they changed to signal the start of the race.

The whole field made it through the first corner and streamed down the Hangar Straight in one long line, but the only thing on the Chad driver’s mind was the BMW Z4 of Csaba Walter immediately in front of him.

Both cars went past the Alpina B6 of Nikolaus Mayr-Meinhof in the opening two laps, but by the third the Ferrari was poised to strike for ninth. He had a look at Copse, but bided his time and took the place further round the lap.

Next on his wish-list was the #61 Porsche of Paul van Splunteren and he gradually reeled him in with a series of consistent and fast laps. This soon became a four-way fight for seventh, with Giacomo third in the queue. At the start of lap ten, he was in the perfect position and dived through at Copse. And eighth almost immediately became seventh when the second-placed #101 Corvette hit trouble.

The Ferrari was now closing the gap to the sixth-placed Audi of Stéphane Lemeret, but he didn’t have time to complete this job as the pit-window had opened and it was time to hand the car over to his teammate. Giacomo had done an excellent job in his dozen laps and he had given Diego the car in a very competitive position.

Diego immediately got to work, but it would not be clear where he was until the pit window closed at 35 minutes. When it did, the timing screens showed that the Ferrari was now fifth.

Some six seconds ahead was the Porsche of Gilles Vannelet and the Ferrari began to quickly close down the gap; but Diego was also coming under intense pressure from Dino Lunardi in the #18 Corvette and it was apparent that the yellow car was faster than the red one. Diego defended robustly, but had to yield at Vale on lap 23. However, the Corvette still had to get past the Porsche and the three cars were soon running nose-to-tail.

On lap 24 the Corvette took fourth and at Copse on the next lap Diego took fifth from the Frenchman. Ahead now was the Lamborghini Gallardo of Ellen Lohr, which had just been pushed down to fourth by Lunardi. The German driver was a long way off her teammate’s pace and her car, which had been leading for a large part of the race, was seemingly in freefall. However, the sight of the Ferrari in her mirrors appeared to stiffen her resolve and she started to defend assertively.

The Ferrari driver had a look at Copse on lap 26, but thought better of it and bided his time; until, on lap 27, he was alongside down the very fast Hangar Straight. As the cars reached Stowe, Diego had the inside line and was a good car’s length ahead of the Gallardo; but Lohr slammed the door very firmly in the Italian’s face with a hugely aggressive dive across the Ferrari’s nose into the corner that left the Scuderia with a holed bumper. This caused Diego to lose momentum and the Lamborghini managed to hang on to third (the leading Corvette having retired two laps earlier) by a quarter of a second when the flag flew at the end of lap 28.

This had been an excellent race for the team, with both drivers producing great drives; but a podium finish would have been a nice end to the day.

Buoyed by this result, and with the car needing no major work after the race, Chad Racing was looking forward to another good race on Sunday afternoon.

Heavy rain fell on Silverstone overnight and it was still raining in the morning, but by the time the GT3 cars were back on track shortly after midday the track had almost completely dried. It was cloudy, cool and blustery, but the race would at least be started on slicks.

In fact the sun was breaking through as the cars set off on the pace lap, but this time the first lap wouldn’t be a clean one. The two leaders immediately hit trouble, with Lunardi spinning at Copse and the #21 Porsche suffering a blow-out.

This triggered wholesale change in the running order as the pack scattered to avoid the cars, with the result that the Chad Ferrari was in tenth at the end of the opening lap. Yes, that was an improvement on eleventh, but he had seen two cars go past him and had effectively lost ground.

As the race settled down, Alessi focussed on recovering that ground and on lap five took ninth from the Z4 of Claudia Hürtgen, and followed this up three laps later by taking eighth from Tim Bergmeister’s Porsche.

His next target was the Team S-Berg Alpina of Martin Matzke, but the Ferrari rose to seventh on lap 12 on account of the leader spinning and suffering race-ending damage. Diego maintained his focus and on lap 14 demoted the BMW.

By now the pit window was open and the Ferrari continued to rise through the standings as more and more cars pitted. On lap 17 he was showing as being in first place; but a horrible realisation dawned – he wouldn’t make it in before the window closed.

The team were calling their driver in, but he stayed out for yet another lap, finally pitting at the end of lap 18; a disastrous three minutes 42 seconds late. This resulted in a stop/go penalty of the same magnitude being announced a few minutes later. Why had he done it? Driver error was seemingly the reason.

But as events transpired this error was to be rendered inconsequential, as Giacomo soon encountered gear-shift problems. He rapidly slowed on track and he reported that the car was stuck in sixth gear. He pitted to take his penalty, at which point the team decided that enough was enough and the car was retired.

This was a disappointing way to end the weekend, but the positives far outweighed the negative. The car had proven itself to be competitive and the drivers and team had played their parts to great effect.

Next stop Brno – with two cars and, hopefully, more robust gearboxes from Kessel.