29 September 2016
Braselton, 29 September 2016 – The Petit Le Mans race will be held this weekend at Road Atlanta. In the final race of the IMSA Sports Car Championship one woman is a single step away from history in the GT-Daytona class. Christina Nielsen at the wheel of the Ferrari 488 GT3 of Scuderia Corsa aims to win the IMSA title with Alessandro Balzan in the ten-hour (or thousand-mile) race, which will start at 11 am on Saturday (5 pm CET).
Season to remember. Christina, just 24, is in her first season with Ferrari and after a sixth place in the 24 Hours of Daytona with the 458 Italia, drove the new 488 GT3 on its debut to victory in the prestigious 12 Hours of Sebring with Balzan and Jeff Segal. The Ferrari no. 63 has never missed out on the top positions this season and notched up another great achievement with victory in the 6 Hours of Watkins Glen. After third place at the Circuit of the Americas two weeks ago Christina was just one step away from the title. Now she just has to finish the job while also trying to win the North American Endurance Cup, which only includes the results obtained in the classics of Daytona, Sebring, Watkins Glen and the Petit Le Mans.
Fast women. If Christina Nielsen were to win the IMSA championship she would join a very select club of women champions. While the Dane is not the first woman to triumph at the 12 Hours of Sebring, she would become the only one to have also won the IMSA title, against more than 50 opponents and six different manufacturers, a level of competition unavailable in Europe. Nielsen, with a 2016 to remember, has already become one of the fastest women in the world, comparable with stars of the calibre of driver and journalist Denise McCluggage, who triumphed in the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1961 in the GT class behind the wheel of a Ferrari 250 GT SWB, or Lyn St. James, twice queen of Daytona and Sebring, but also two-time Le Mans winner Marie-Claude Charmasson, the multifaceted Michel Mouton, runner-up in the 1982 world rally championship in the days of the scary Group B cars and class winner at the 24 Hours Le Mans, Jutta Kleinschmidt the dominator of the Dakar and finally the great Lella Lombardi, who is still the only woman to have taken points in Formula 1.