11/01/2009
The weather was uncertain for the 3000 spectators and the 1000 guests invited by teams in the paddock on the Paul Ricard HTTT. Luckily the sun showed itself during the morning.
The 1960s and 1970s tourism cars of Challenge ASAVE started a first race in the early morning. Then the very expected historic F1 cars made their first track laps during the warm up.
Next the GT90 cars made the show at 9h15 and 11h35 allowing Marcel Tarres and Florent Moulin to won consecutively 2 races with Saleen S7-R GT1 of Team Tarres Auto, ahead of Patrice Milesi's Porsche 993 GT2 of CERT99 and Christian Philippon's Chrysler Viper GTS-R of Espace Racing team.
The most expected race of the Historic Grand Prix of Provence for nostalgic and passionate people was the unique F1 race of the weekend, the finale of the FIA Historic F1 Championship. Andy Meyric of Team AMR at the wheel of fabulous March 761/6 (driven by Vittorio Brambilla) was the poleman ahead of Joaquim Folch's Brabham BT49C-10 (driven in the past by Nelson Piquet, triple F1 world champion in 80s). When the lights turned green, big emotions were felt in the audience and the paddock... The fabulous maintained historic F1 cars completed a great race « that confirms that this track is made to host this kind of racing car » said in the paddock...
"The success of this weekend is an additional step in the continuity of what we started this year in opening the doors to the public" said Gérard Neveu, Circuit Director, at the end of weekend. "We are very proud to host a high quality meeting and to see a F1 Grand Prix almost 20 years after the last French F1 Grand Prix. We have already started to work on the organization of a new historic F1 meeting in 2010 that will be more intense !"
All the results : here
