New team CR Scuderia have had the honour of taking delivery of the first 2008 specification Ferrari F430 GT2 car and carrying out a shake-down test at Fiorano. Andrew Kirkaldy reported that the car felt good despite the freezing conditions and thanked Cristiano Michelotto and his team for pulling out all the stops to deliver it before Christmas. The car will star at the Autosprout International Show at the NEC in January where its title sponsor and 2008 racing colours will be revealed.

Unfortunately no details have been released of the '08 spec of the car compared with the '07 one, so we can't report on anything there.

CR Scuderia (or CRS for short) is launching a three-pronged attack on the British and international motor sport scenes in 2008. The new team is a venture of Chris Niarchos, who has supported various categories of motor sport for five years including the Ferrari Owners' Club Pirelli Ferrari Maranello Challenge (now sadly defunct). Since then, as a major sponsor of Scuderia Ecosse, he has raced in FIA GT and the Le Mans 24 hrs, where he scored a GT2 podium in 2006. In the same year he won the British GT Champiomship with Tim Mullen.

The CRS Team Director is Andrew Kirkaldy, former single-seater racer and winner of the McLaren Autosport BRDC 'Young Driver of the Year' award, who turned to GT racing with considerable success. These two, together with legendary mechanic/race engineer Paul Jackson, ran the AKA Cobra team in the Formula Renault UK Championship in 2007and this will continue under the CR Scuderia banner in 2008.

The other two prongs of their racing campaign will be a triple car entry in the British GT Championship using Ferrari F430 GT3s, whilst the most high profile effort will be a pair of Ferrari F430 GT2 cars running in the international FIA GT Championship. The driver line-up for the FIA GT series will be Chris with Tim Mullen, and Andrew with Rob Bell, the final seat placements for the other series are still to be determined

			pics by CRS & DPPI

Click here to return to the Ferrari Happenings page.