Fiat's newest best-selling compact model, the Grande Punto, has kicked off its racing career in some style, with two Multijet-powered examples starting and comfortably finishing the Nürburgring 24 Hours, the self-styled 'world's toughest race', after 24 hours of mixing it up on track with bigger and more powerful opposition.

The annual 24 hour race around the legendary Nürburgring circuit in Germany is known as the 'green hell' and is a most gruelling test that pits both sportscars and touring cars, mostly driven by amateur racing drivers, competing in a swage of different classes against each other as well as against a hellish race track that simply crushes the weak and under-prepared. A brace of Fiat Grade Puntos driven by all-Italian crews were taking part and competing in the closely-watched S1 class for 'Alternative Fuel' cars, a category where the JTD-powered Alfa 147 has held sway for the last three editions of this race.

The production Fiat Grande Punto has arrived in the showrooms with a real bang ever since it was first rolled out onto the Italian market late last September, and it has been consistently Europe's best-selling car this year. The Grande Punto has already hit the sporting headlines for its rally exploits this year in the new Super2000 category where it now leads comfortably both the Italian and European Rally Championships', but this race was to be its endurance track debut.

Both entries were finished in the now-traditional Grande Punto 'orange' and were supported by 'Blue&Me', the new in-car info-telematic system developed jointly by Fiat Auto and Microsoft's Automotive Business Division, which was introduced in the early spring at the Geneva International Motor Show. The cars were also backed by technical partners including Brembo, Bilstein and Selenia and were running on Continental tyres. Car #261 was piloted by Giancarlo Coia, Andrea Vizzini, Alberto Richard and David Raseri while #262 was shared by Piero Rissome, Mauro Demichelis, Alberto Vesconi and Vincenzo Panacci.
 

Class S1 has become one of the most important categories in the Nürburgring 24 hour race, rapidly gaining in importance as diesel-power sweeps its way in priority across the European new car markets'. With Audi winning the Le Mans 24 Hours at the same time last weekend with their turbodiesel-powered LMP1 sportscar, leading car manufacturers' including BMW, VW, Alfa Romeo, SEAT and Renault were all closely involved in the 20-strong entry for the S1 class at the Nürburgring 24 Hours this year.

The final grid for the 2006 edition numbered 225 cars with the Italian brands being well represented: Alfa Romeo, Maserati and Lamborghini all appearing on the grid; the Trident brand in fact officially entering two cars through its new Factory R&D team. The two Grande Puntos lined up 217th and 221st on the grid, and immediately from the green flag they were scything their way through the field, fighting for track position with bigger and faster machines. Class S1 was eventually won by the factory-supported #263 BMW 120d driven by Claudia Hürtgen, Marc Hennerici, Johannes Stuck and Torsten Schubert who completed 138 laps of the 23.5 kilometre circuit in 23 hours 58 minutes and 14.930 seconds, ten laps ahead of the VW Golf V piloted by Kai Jordan, Ralph Bohnhorst, Sven Koch and Andreas Waldheim. A SEAT Leon 1.9 TDI was third with the fastest of the Alfa 149 JTD runners coming home fifth.

The best placed of the two Fiat Grande Puntos at the chequered flag on Sunday afternoon at 1500 was the #262 car which completed 105 laps to finish 12th in the S1 class (117th overall), one place in class and three laps in front of its sister #261 car (122nd overall).