Boss GP Season Opens at Paul Ricard: Race 1

The 2023 BOSS GP Racing Series got underway on Saturday, with Anglo-American Peter Mann’s Formula 1 Ferrari F2008 starting on pole, for the first race of the season.

However, it was record-breaking champion, Ingo Gerstl, in his Toro Rosso STR1 Formula 1 car, who kept a “cool head” to win the first of 14 races this season.

The Salzburg native was presented the winner’s trophy by French racing legends Jean Alesi, Rene Arnoux and Franck Montagny. Ulf Ehninger (ESBA Racing) finished second, with Didier Sirgue (LRS Racing) taking third place in the BOSS GP F1 Class

Ex-Formula 1 driver, Antonio Pizzonia (HS Engineering) was busy handing out autographs before the start and, just a few minutes later, he was turning lap times under 1:50 in his World Series Dallara. The Brazilian driver went on to set the fastest lap of the race at 1:47.092, and win the OPEN class. It was his first single-seater victory since his triumph in the AutoGP championship eight years ago.

The FORMULA class was full of excitement. Pole sitter Marc Faggionato, wearing the MM International colours for the first time, stalled at the start of the warm-up lap and had to start from the back of the field. However, it didn’t take long before the Paul Ricard specialist was back up with the leading pack; joining the duel between Simone Colombo (MM International) and Marco Ghiotto (Scuderia Palladio) in their GP2 Dallara cars. A mistake by Colombo proved costly for the two Italians, as the resulting collision between the pair meant the race was over for Ghiotto. Although Colombo was able to continue, he was forced to pit for a new nose. This allowed Faggionato to overcome his back-of-the-grid race start to take the class victory. It was the Monegasque driver’s third BOSS GP win, after a double victory in Brno 2018. Meanwhile, Colombo was able to recover to take second.

Unimpressed with all the action happening around him, “Checco” Malavasi (Scuderia Palladio) finished a fine  third. Giancarlo Pedetti (Nannini Racing) finshed a strong fourth place, just missing out on the podium. Jean-Christophe Peyre (FRA, Zig-Zag) finished fifth in his home race in the only AutoGP car on the grid.

Due to the incidents in the FORMULA class, SUPER LIGHTS driver WF Racing’s Henry Clausnitzer was also able to finish the race in the top-10, taking a class win in his very first BOSS GP race.