FIA GT - San Luis 

Markus and Mikael Forsten were fighting for a podium until the last lap of the race and finally finished 5th in the last race of the FIA GT Championship in San Luis, Argentina. Prospeed Competition travelled to Argentina with the 2nd place in team championship in mind, but an early accident of the works-car stopped that dream and Prospeed scored a fine 3rd place in the team standings.

Since Spa 24 Hours end of July, the #60 of Markus and Mikael has been getting more competitive, but bad luck has intervened too many times. Retirements from Spa, Bucharest and Nogaro were followed by Mikael's best performance of the season leading to 5th in Brno and Markus and Marc Lieb scoring 3rd in Zolder. In San Luis, it was the final chance for the two Finns to climb on the podium together.

It started well, when Markus qualified 4th just a few tenths from pole. He kept his place in the start and climbed up the order in the opening laps. First, Markus overtook teammate Manu Collard at the end of lap 1 and the lap later both Prospeed Porsches charged ahead of Tim Mullen's CR Ferrari. From there on, Markus ran 2nd until the first pitstop.

Mikael was struggling a bit in the difficult conditions in the beginning of his stint and had to let Bell and Ruberti pass, but then found the rhythm and kept a good pace and his rivals on sight. He brought the car back to the pits on 5th position and Markus went out to finish the race and the season.

Markus had the best race pace apart from the leading AF Corse duo and managed to get to 4th and catch up with Andrew Kirkaldy in the CR Scuderia F430 right in the end of the race. He tried to overtake a couple times, but Kirkaldy was defending fiercely. As neither of the drivers was in contention for the championship glory, they simply wanted to finish the season on the podium, what ever it took. On the last lap, Markus got a better exit from the 2nd chicane and went on the side of Kirkaldy to go for the 3rd place. Kirkaldy thought none of it and closed the door. Markus tried to pull out, but had nowhere to go and they crashed each other out. In the end, it cost both one position, as only the 3rd AF Ferrari passed them and Markus limbed over the finish line to take 5th, as the only non-Ferrari in the top 10.

"It was an interesting race on a very spectacular track. I really liked all of it out there, the scenery, the weather, the fast circuit and the tricky conditions. I'm pretty happy with our pace, but of course I would've preferred to finish higher up. I couldn't do anything against Russo or Bruni, but had no problems with the rest. It was unfortunate that we ended up crashing with Kirkaldy. I don't know what he thinks of it, but I see it as a racing incident, where I wanted to challenge him and where he didn't want to leave me any room. I really wanted to give one podium for Mikael and I know that we all would have felt much worse if I had just cruised to the end on 4th. It was basically all or nothing and we had to try everything we could. After all, it's not F1 where the races are decided mainly on pits.

I feel a bit sorry for the team, because we really wanted to get 2nd in the team standings and grab the last available Le Mans entry. After qualifying 2nd and 4th, well ahead of our rivals from BMS, we were in a good position, but it all went horribly wrong when Manu slipped to the wall, as did many others. We still scored more than BMS, but it was too little too late. It was the first season in international sports car racing for Prospeed and I think everyone in the team is fairly proud of the season as they should be. The start wasn't easy, but we had some good races in the end. For Mikael and me, it was very tough throughout the season. Only in the end were we able to fight for good results and we just ended up having too much bad luck. I think we had only 2 races without any problems. There is room for improvement, but there were also performances which were very good. Nothing is decided for next year, so it's time to start working on it."