The most awaited race of the 2023 Ferrari World Finals at Mugello, the one dedicated to the drivers of the Trofeo Pirelli and Pirelli AM classes, took place late in the morning today with a nice battle between the two youngest and most promising drivers of the Ferrari Challenge Europe, namely Thomas Fleming and Eliseo Donno.
The British driver prevailed after a race in which he had to defend first place from the attacks of the Italian driver of the Radicci Automobili team, clinching the title with a perfect defence in all three restarts, caused by two Safety Car interventions and a red flag.
The race proved to be eventful right from the start, when Matt Kurzejewski, Yudai Uchida and Brian Cook came into contact at Luco, prompting the race direction to deploy the Safety Car. The marshals signalled its entry, but a few seconds after the first incident, another one occurred at Materassi - Borgo San Lorenzo involving Bence Valint, Dylan Medler and Roberto Perrina.
One of the cars ended up against the barriers between Luco Poggio Secco and Materassi Borgo San Lorenzo, breaking them, and the subsequent contact between two other cars of the drivers mentioned brought a lot of dirt and debris onto the track. This, given the six cars involved, led the race direction to interrupt the race by displaying the red flags.
The stop to clean the track and repair the barriers lasted almost an hour. Then the cars resumed racing again, starting behind the Safety Car. But the race was interrupted almost immediately with a another entry of the Safety Car due to Danilo Del Favero spinning at Bucine and ending up clouting into the innocent Justin Rothberg.
On the next restart Tony Davis, Michael Porter and Omar Balkissoon crashed at Poggio Secco. The first two came off the worst and this led to the last Safety Car of the race being called. At that point Fleming didn’t have to do anything but bring his 488 Challenge Evo to the finish line ahead of Donno and Adrian Sutil, third.
As regards the Trofeo Pirelli AM classification, veteran Franz Engstler was the star performer, becoming champion of the class ahead of Canadian Marc Muzzo and Nobuhiro Imada from Japan. Engstler also had the satisfaction of finishing fifth overall, ahead of Muzzo and the second Italian in the Top 10, Max Mugelli of the CDP - Eureka Competition team.
