Sam Bird made an immediate impact on the World Endurance Championship on his Series debut at Silverstone, as he combined with Michele Rugolo to secure the Am class pole on Saturday by a margin of 0.991 to the second placed Aston Martin of Pedro Lamy.
In Sunday’s race, with Australian gentleman driver Steve Wyatt joining the fold, Sam lead the team to a hard-fought podium finish.
With the sister AF Corse 51 car driven by Bruni and Vilander securing the PRO class pole on Saturday, AF Corse Ferrari had been hopeful of multiple trophies.
Unfortunately however, the heavy rain that fell in the final stages of the race was particularly penalising to the Ferrari cars and the team had to settle for a solitary podium finish with Bird, Rugolo and Wyatt.
"We showed we had the outright pace by putting our car on pole by quite a big margin,” said Sam.
"However, we tend to lose relative competitiveness in the extreme wet, which is why our cars struggled towards the end of the race. Gimmi (Bruni) and Toni (Vilander) were looking good for some silverware as well in the PRO class but it wasn’t to be.
"Huge credit to my team mates Michele and Steve and to the whole team at AF Corse Ferrari for fighting so hard for this podium in conditions that were quite unfavourable to us."