Jaime Melo, Gianmaria Bruni, and Bib celebrate the Risi Ferrari team's win in GT at Utah. Photo credit: Rick Dole for Michelin North America

Things went about as well as possible for Risi Competizione’s No. 62 Ferrari F430 GT at Utah, as Jaime Melo and Gianmaria Bruni took their second victory of the 2010 season. Despite an early pit stop on the second yellow flag, Melo and Bruni still won by 21.179 seconds in class. Melo pulled out enough of a gap before his last stop that he still exited ahead of second place by 29 seconds, after putting in a double stint on his set of MICHELIN® tires.

“I drove the last hour and a half so it was quite warm, but the tires were so good and very impressive,” Melo said. “It was important for us, especially after the bad result in Le Mans. We were ahead maybe 30 seconds, and I just tried to not go off line and get it dirty or off the race line.”

The BMW Rahal Letterman Racing Team split their strategy between the two M3s, and it paid dividends as the team captured its fifth podium finish this season. Bill Auberlen and Tommy Milner did not pit when the No. 62 and four others did and vaulted to the lead, though were passed midway through the next stint. They avoided trouble while others hit issues and Auberlen and Milner recorded their third podium finish this year.

Corvette Racing earned another podium and had to overcome a stop-and-go penalty to do it. The No. 3 car hit an air hose on its last scheduled stop and had to come in to serve the penalty. But Jan Magnussen fought back, and a late race pass of Dirk Mueller in the second Rahal Letterman BMW netted the yellow ‘Vette third place. Magnussen co-drove with Johnny O’Connell.

Mueller and Joey Hand were fourth with Flying Lizard Motorsports’ No. 45 Porsche of Joerg Bergmeister and Patrick Long completing the top five. The second Risi Ferrari of Giancarlo Fisichella and Toni Vilander was sixth ahead of the two Extreme Speed Motorsports Ferraris.

Extreme Speed had two highlights on the day with Johannes van Overbeek setting the fastest lap in class at 1:48.677 and the sister car of Guy Cosmo and Ed Brown taking its first win in the GT class of the MICHELIN® GREEN X® Challenge. Both ESM Ferraris made their debut with Cellulosic E85 (second generation ethanol) this weekend.

Things are incredibly close in the championship. Unofficially, Risi’s pairing of Melo and Bruni lead the driver’s championship with 75 points, while Bergmeister and Long are on 73, and Auberlen and Milner are on 63. In the manufacturer’s championship, BMW has the lead with 76 points despite not winning a race, but only by one point over Ferrari on 75 and three over Porsche on 73.

GTC had several different leaders but for the second straight race the Black Swan Racing GT3 Cup earned the class victory with drivers Tim Pappas and Jeroen Bleekemolen. This had to have at least slightly atoned for Bleekemolen’s home soccer squad, The Netherlands, losing the World Cup Final 1-0 to Spain.