Ferrari F430 Wins American Le Mans GT2 at Sebring

Ferrari's F430 and the Pierre Kaffer, Jaime Melo and Mika Salo trio won the GT2 class race of the American Le Mans series at Sebring, with the number 62 car leading the race from the second hour until the finish. Starting from the 10th place of the grid, Mika Salo managed to take the lead of the class in no less than 50 of the 332 laps, scoring his 14th overall victory and the first for Kaffer.

Dominik Farnbacher and Ian James competing for Ford's Panoz Esperante GTLM completed the podium, with a total of 329 laps, followed by Jörg Bergmeister, Patrick Long and Marc Lieb on Porsche 911 GT3 RSR with 326 laps.

The next American Le Mans series stage is the Acura Sports Car Challenge of St. Petersburg (St. Petersburg, FL, US), followed by the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach (Long Beach, CA, US) and the Larry H. Miller Dealerships Utah Grand Prix presented by the Grand and Little America Hotels (Tooele, UT, US) on April 04, April 19 and May 17, respectively.

On the other hand, the Ferrari Challenge season which only costs of race-ready Ferrari F430 models, debuted in Homestead, FL this weekend. Boardwalk Ferrari's Scott Tucker, who finished second in the 2008 Challenge series, started in pole-position and won the race, followed by 2008 Rookie of the Year Mark McKenzie with two podium finishes and 2007 challenge champion Mike Zoi with a second place finish on Sunday.

After the Miami Homestead Speedway stage, the Ferrari Challenge Season will travel to Road Atlanta, Georgia (April 17-19), Infineon Racewa, California (May 1-3), Road America, Wisconsin (June 26-28), Mt. Tremblant, Canada (July 24-26) and Motorsports Park, New Jersey (Sept. 18-20).