FIA GT Program Starts Testing
The sun shone on Monza for the official test days of the 2008 season of the FIA GT and GT3 European Championships, when a grand total of 58 cars, including some representatives of the GT4 European Cup, assembled at the powerful Italian track.
New regulations obliged each full-season entrant to enter one car in the test days. All eleven models due to take part in this season’s FIA GT3 European Championship were running in Monza, where 24 cars were present, earlier this month.
The times proved to be extremely close, with the new Porsche 997 GT3 Cup S car, entered by Prospeed Competition, proving to be the fastest, setting a lap of 1:53.066 on the first day. However, it was only one thousandth of a second faster than the reigning Teams Champion, the nr 1 Martini Callaway Corvette Z06.
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The top ten cars were all within a second of each other – including eight different makes of car : the Dodge Viper, Aston Martin DBRS9, Ascari KZ1R, Jaguar XKR, Ford GT and Ferrari 430 GT3.
The Lamborghini Gallardo GT3, Ford Mustang FR500 GT3 and Morgan Aero were not far behind, as all models set times within approximately one and a half seconds.
The next official FIA test session will take place on March 31st – April 1st in Nogaro, France, which will include performance testing for the GT2 and GT3 cars.
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