POLE POSTION and VICTORY and FIA Gt3 Team Champions Title

Luca arrived in Dubai ready to fight for the title and so he did. After a good free practice he went confident that on qualifying he could push thanks to a good set up and new tires in order to start in a good position and so he did: POLE POSTION!

Amazing most of the crowd and also his same team he scored his second pole of the season and hi 3rd first row start out of 5 races, he is the only one out of 90 drivers of the FIA Gt3 that in 2007 managed such a result.

Race 1

Confident of his speed and of the car Luca started from Pole, he immediately had a contact with Aston Martin driver Alessi that eventually spun, and he lost 7 positions.
Big pressure on him as the team thought that it was all lost, but Luca did not give up and one fast lap after another one he passed everyone giving the car to Jourgen in second position, Jourgen after a perfect driver change droved perfectly as usual and gave to the Italo-Teutonic couple a well deserved win, the 4th of the season.
Title Rivals Moser and Vannelet after having to start from back of grid due to a non regular back wing height…. Wonder if they had it only in Dubai….! Fought their way to 3rd place.

Race 2

Jourgen was to start race 2 in 3rd position will rival Ferrari was starting 5th, after a brilliant start Jourgen was leading the group but a non optimal grip on tires due to a
non ideal tire pressure had to make him lift up for a few laps sliding to 3rd.
Jourgen kept a good peace in race and by the time he handed the car to Luca they where again 2nd, Luca started immediately to push knowing he had to recover 20 seconds to the leader but what happened is better described by the words of Dailysportscar magazine

"When all the stops were over, Luca Pirri was in second place and Vannelet ninth. Although Lagniez´s lead was 23 seconds, Pirri could lap four seconds quicker and would likely take the lead. The Ferrari would thus have to get to at least third in the remaining twenty minutes; and, frankly, that wasn´t going to happen.
Unless, perhaps, we had a caution period before the end.."

But ‘miraculously´ a car from Kessel driven by slow driver Paul Warren, spun and with no apparent reason as most gt3 cars are ALWAYS able to restart stalled the car and left it on track at 3rd last lap . Safety car was than in for 2 laps to remove the pretending to be stalled car… and with great luck of Kessel Luca found himself during the safety car laps behind another lapped Kessel car, the N37 driven with great fairplay by Konstantin Ioannidis who not only lost contact with leading Aston at restart but had also the guts to close Luca despite being lapped, footage visible on www.fiagt3.com web site Dubai video.

This concerted moves of team Kessel and the little grip due to the tire pressure problem encountered also by Von Gartzen allowed cars that are regularly slower to pass Luca at the restart and due to the short time left 2 laps he was not able to regain his position and the Championship was gone.

As a reminder to all that are reading this post, Luca was disqualified in Race 2 in Monza after regularly winning the race, with those 10 pints he would be Champion….!