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Former Veloqx / Ferrari UK 360N-GT squad member and Club Fiorano
Instructor, Allan Simonsen took the newly acquired ex-Rafanelli
ALMS Ferrari 550GT to victory in the opening round of the Australian
Nations Cup GT Championship at the Adelaide GP circuit on Sunday
21st March.
Melbourne based Mark Coffey Racing, who last year took the young
Danish driver to 14 victories from 15 starts with a Ferrari 360
Challenge, only received the car from Italy ten days before the
event. Nations Cup, being a parity based category meant that the
550 had to be converted from carbon to steel brakes and also received
200 kilos of ballast!
Notwithstanding the inability to test, Allan qualified the car
2nd to 2003 Champion Paul Stokell's Lamborghini Diablo. Stokell
won the two Saturday preliminaries after Allan had to recover from
a brush with the wall fighting for the lead in race one.
In race two he made a crowd pleasing comeback to 2nd place again
after receiving a drive through penalty for a starting infringement.
In the main Sunday race a bad start meant the green Ferrari was
down to 3rd in the early laps but won a thrilling race. The first
three, Simonsen, Stokell (Lamborghini) and Nathan Pretty (7 litre
Monaro) were covered by 2.1 seconds.
As well as taking the victory, Simonsen's MCR Ferrari also set
a new lap record, faster even than the V8 supercars racing on the
same programme.
This series can be seen on Motors TV on Sky.
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