Vitaphone and Maserati make strong start to the 2009 season
A win and two podiums from opening two races

The 2009 FIA GT Championship got under way with a two-hour race on the famous Silverstone Grand Prix track in Great Britain, with teams and drivers competing for the prestigious Royal Automobile Club Tourist Trophy. The Vitaphone Racing team had high hopes - not only had they claimed the Trophy twice in the past three years, but also at least one Maserati MC12 has finished the Silverstone race on the podium.

Last year Vitaphone took the Teams' title, for an unprecedented fourth year in a row, while Michael Bartels and Andrea Bertolini took their second Drivers' Championship, having previously won in 2006. Bartels and Bertolini remain together for this season, while Miguel Ramos has been joined by Alex Müller in the No.2 Maserati. The team's hopes were tempered with the knowledge that one their main competitors, the Saleen S7, had been given a performance break for this year after it was comprehensively outclassed in 2008; the larger air intake restrictor would mean more power. Meanwhile the Maserati is still forced to carry 25k of ballast and run a smaller rear wing than other cars, recognition that the MC12 's performance is at a higher level compared to its Saleen, Corvette and Aston Martin challengers.

The extra power granted to the Saleen made its presence felt in the qualifying session; Vitaphone may have been pleased to take second and third on the grid, but the Saleen on pole position was almost a second faster than the Maserati, the long straights of the 3.2-mile Grand Prix circuit enabling the Saleen to make the most of its higher top speed.

The race was a different story; the two Maseratis were able to hold the gap to the Saleen at around ten seconds, until back-markers intervened. Even then, the flying Maseratis kept the race leader within striking distance - an impressive performance, given that the No.1 car of Bartels and Bertolini was carrying four laps of extra fuel over the Saleen; the two cars were running first and second after the Saleen pitted on lap 27. But bad news struck the No.2 car of Müller and Ramos just two laps later - shortly after a pit-stop the car came to a halt on the circuit with a detached left rear wheel, the result of a rare error from the Vitaphone crew. With the car stranded on three wheels, the safety car was deployed, and Vitaphone made the most of the opportunity to bring the No.1 car in for fuel, tires and a driver change.

With the field being controlled by the safety car, Bartels made it out of the pits still in the lead of the race. The straight-line advantage of the Saleen - which Bartels estimated as almost 10mph - meant that the lead only lasted five laps. On lap 50 the Vitaphone Maserati once again took the lead when the Saleen made its second pit-stop - but just a lap later Bartels headed down pit road to hand over to Bertolini for the final stint. Remarkably, the MC12 retained the lead of the race - by less than a second - courtesy of slick work by the Vitaphone crew, and the fact that, despite packing over 600 horsepower, the Maserati gives its tires an easy time, so they did not need to be changed during the stop.

For the next two laps it looked like a grandstand finish as Bertolini defended his meager lead, his mirrors full of the pursuing Saleen. But the enthralled were denied seeing the race go down to the wire; into Club corner on lap 55 the Maserati was badly baulked by a GT2 car which moved to the outside at the last moment. The Saleen dived to the inside while Bertolini somehow managed to avoid colliding with the slower car, and the race was effectively settled.

The Maserati came home in second place, maintaining the podium finish record of the MC12; the Saleen was only 5.5 seconds ahead, while the car in a distant third place was more than 20 seconds behind the Vitaphone car. The two drivers were upbeat about the result, although fearful that the performance advantage handed to the Saleen could mean this will be a difficult season for them. "We had excellent stints, perfect pit stops and a solid strategy. Today though, winning was impossible; Wendlinger and Sharp, in the Saleen, drove brilliantly and there was little we could do. It will be a very tough season for us," commented Andrea Bertolini. His team-mate, Michael Bartels, agreed, saying: "It was like a win today. In fact, we feel like the GT1 winners because, given their performance, I would say the Saleens belong in another category. So, I think taking second was like a win because this was the best placing we could hope for."

Just two weeks later the teams were faced with a dramatically different challenge – the tight, twisting Adria track in Italy, at 1.68 miles the shortest venue used this season. Once again the extra power handed to the Saleen by the FIA enabled it to go fastest – but the race saw an all-Maserati front row after the Saleen was found to break the regulations and was sent to the back of the grid. That meant Bertolini and Bartels started from pole position, with Müller and Ramos alongside them.

Maserati MC12's in Adria

When the lights turned green at the start of the two-hour race the two Vitaphone cars set a furious pace at the head of the pack; over the first ten laps there was less than a second between the two flying Maseratis as they steadily pulled away from their pursuers. Traffic saw the gap grow to around four seconds, but it soon closed down again – but then Müller came in to hand over to Ramos after 34 laps, while Bertolini stayed out for another ten laps. At this stage it was clear that an MC12 would win; the only question was, which one. After both cars had made their first stops Müller and Ramos had leapfrogged Bertolini and Bartels to take the lead, with less than three seconds between the Vitaphone team-mates and rivals.

But then Ramos was forced to take a drive-through penalty, given to the team for incorrect use of tires. That dropped him to fourth, some 20 seconds away from the lead, and struggling with lots of lapped traffic. The penalty effectively decided the race, with Bertolini and Bartels enjoying a trouble-free run from there to the checkered flag to take their first victory of the season. Ramos and Müller extracted the maximum from their Maserati to climb back up to third and scoring their first podium finish of the year.

The result saw Bertolini and Bartels rise to the top of the Drivers’ Championship, and with two cars in the top three Vitaphone are also now in charge of the Teams’ table, nine points clear of their nearest rivals. The teams now have a month-long break before the next race, on the technically difficult track of Oschersleben, in Germany. Since this is the ‘home’ race for the Vitaphone team, they will be determined to consolidate their leads in both standings of the FIA GT Championship.