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The first ever
race of the new Brazilian GT3 Championship began in great
style: on Sunday afternoon,
the Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 won the first race of the double round with Paulo Bonifácio and Alceu Feldmann
driving. The second 1-hour race was won by Xandy Negrão
and Andréas Mattheis who were in a Dodge Viper.
The
double-header race at the Tarumã circuit kicked off the
inaugural Brazilian GT3 Championship, which transfers the
successful concept of the European GT3 series overseas to
South America for the first time. The new championship is
run to the same rules, overseen by SRO, and with the cars'
having their performance carefully equated. Ferrari,
Lamborghini and Maserati are all brands involved in the
action. The Brazilian GT3 classification after Sunday's two
races is lead by Paulo Bonifácio and Alceu Feldmann in the Lamborghini Gallardo, just two points ahead of Xandy Negrão
and Andréas Mattheis.
At the start of the second
race the Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 suffered problems when all
cars had already taken up their positions in the grid as a consequence the
crew were forced to start from the box. At the beginning of the race, Cláudio
Ricci assumed first place with his Ferrari F430, followed by Luiz
Paternostro also in a F430, with Negrão's Dodge Viper in the third
position. The positions remained unchanged up to the fourth lap, when Xandy’s
Viper overtook Paternostro’s F430 and started to chase
Ricci's car.
However the Ferrari was proving fast on the track and the positions would stay the same until the pit
stops. In the pits the Dodge team was more efficient than Ferrari one, and
after the changing of pilots with Mattheis assuming Xandy’s
seat, the Ferrari lost first place in the boxes when Walter Derani came back
to the track in the place of Ricci, who had twice set the
fastest lap when he was leading the race, latterly with a time of 1minute 03.454
seconds.
Meanwhile, the Lamborghini Gallardo that won the first race, was making a
great recovery, showing its reliability and speed and overtaking several cars in the track
but again, another episode harmed the performance of the Italian GT car.
When Boni assumed Feldmann's place, he started before the end of the two
regulatory minutes for pilot’s changing and was penalized loosing precious seconds. Alencar Júnior's Ferrari F430 in the fourth place
was performing one of the best
spectacles of the race, as he was locked in a dispute with Ramón Matias and Marcelo Fernandes
in two Dogde Vipers ahead Feldmann's Lamborghini.
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