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Dubai: Pirelli race report

PIRELLI ON THE DUBAI FIA-GT PODIUM WITH MASERATI (GT1) AND FERRARI (GT2) The Final Battle in the 2006 FIA-GT Championship Was Fought to the Last Lap with MC12 of Davies-Biagi-Vosse Finishing Third; Jaime Melo is the 2006 GT2 Champion. DUBAI ...

Published: Nov 23, 2006, 5:40 AM

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PIRELLI ON THE DUBAI FIA-GT PODIUM WITH MASERATI (GT1) AND FERRARI (GT2)

The Final Battle in the 2006 FIA-GT Championship Was Fought to the Last Lap with MC12 of Davies-Biagi-Vosse Finishing Third; Jaime Melo is the 2006 GT2 Champion.

DUBAI (UAE) The grand finale of the 2006 FIA-GT Championship on the Dubai circuit offered one last act of the season that was decidedly hard fought, in which the cars fitted with Pirelli P Zero Racings battled for both overall and class success until the last of the 89 laps. After an excellent beginning, the Maserati MC12 driven by Davies-Biagi-Vosse and the Aston Martin of Babini-Malucelli competing on the Milan manufacturer's tires came third and fourth at the end of a race made extremely tough by the heat and sand.

The "3 Hours" of Dubai also decreed that the winner of the GT2 Drivers' Championship was to be Jaime Melo, who came second in his category and ninth overall in an AF Corse Ferrari 430 GTC on Pirelli P Zero Racing to earn the points that enabled him to win the much deserved title that had always ended up with Porsche standard bearers in recent years. But Porsche still risked pulling off a real coup at Dubai with the 996 GT3-RSR of Team Ebimotors-Pirelli. The car, driven by Collard-Rockenfeller, was in the lead for a long time before being forced to slow and finish sixth due to a broken hydro-drive.

Jamie Davies, who drove the #2 Maserati MC12 to a podium place together with Biagi and Vosse, explained that "it was not possible to do better with over 100 Kilos of ballast aboard. Lapping cars further complicated the task because it is a demanding maneuver, but in substance I am pleased with the position and the yield of the P Zero Racings fitted to our car".

Pierluigi De Cancellis, Circuit Manager of Pirelli Competizioni, declared that he was "half satisfied with the final result of the race, in which the cars on Pirelli P Zero Racing merited more luck, as in the case of the Maserati MC12 of Bertolini penalized by an accident with a lapped car that made him drop to the back of the field or Rockenfeller's Porsche, which dominated the scene before having to slow down due to a technical fault. However, I am more than happy for the global result of Pirelli's 2006 FIA-GT season, which has been rich in titles victories and our best in recent GT racing history".

-credit: pirelli

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