Rubens Barrichello was the star guest.

Vanina Ickx scored a tremendous 360 Challenge win

Stieger's 512M won both sportscar races.

The Shell Historic Challenge brought out some excellent cars.

Spa Ferrari Days
29/30.4.00

Spa-Francorchamps played host to the first round of the Western and Central European Ferrari 360 Challenge Championships, as well as the Shell Historic Challenge.

The 26 competitors in the first heat of the Western European race were led home by the French driver Bernard Bassaler at the wheel of his ultra-competitive F355. Behind him in the rankings was a solid wall of 360 Modenas with the Direrck/Duez car in second place, followed by Jakubowski in third and Vanina Ickx in her debut drive in the series.

The 25-year-old daughter of ex-Ferrari Formula 1 driver Jacky Ickx pulled off a superb victory in the second heat. After a poor start, which saw her drop back into fifth place, Vanina fought her way back up through the front runners, passing Machiels in the leading car with a well-calculated overtaking manoeuvre under braking at the Bus-Stop chicane and also setting the fastest lap with a time of 2 m 35.9 s - an average speed of over 160 km/h.

After the race a clearly delighted and emotional Vanina admitted to being extremely relieved at the outcome: "Of course, there has been a lot of pressure because of my name, but now that's behind me. This is my first win, and I can't wait to tell my father!"

The Central European heat of the 360 Challenge saw an even better turnout with 29 cars packed onto the grid. The first race was won by Daniel Künzli who crossed the line 3.8 seconds ahead of Norbert Graf with Carsten Struwe close behind. The Swiss driver took an even healthier lead in race two, finishing ahead of Klaus Rader and the Italian driver Paolo Ligresti who had dropped out of the first heat on lap three with mechanical problems.

The weekend was admirably completed by a huge selection of classic Ferraris and Maseratis taking part in the Shell Historic Challenge, and a display of six classic Formula 1 cars, from the ex-Lauda 312 T2 of 1976 to a 1997 F310B.

The German collector Burkhard Von Schenk had a busy and particularly successful weekend racing and winning in two separate classes. He won both heats of the single seater races in his magnificent Maserati 250F (the car that Jean Behra drove to third place at Spa in 1956) after duelling at length with Corrado Cuppellini's 1957 Dino F1. He then went on to win both heats in the drum brake class, his Maserati 300 S easily leading home a Maserati 1-2-3 in the first heat with the Maserati 300 S driven by William Binnie in second place and Robertino Wild's A6 GCS in third.

The first heat of the disc brake class was won by Patrick Stieger in the Ferrari 512 M, with the second 512 M driven by Dutchman John Bosch finishing second and David Franklin's Group 4 Daytona in third place. The 512 Ms dominated the second race, too, but ex-Ferrari works driver David Piper drove an excellent race and overtook Franklin in his 275 LM for third place.

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