Gianmaria Bruni - Career

Career

At age ten Bruni lied about his age (twelve was the minimum age for competition) to the director of La Pista d'Oro, a kart racetrack in Rome, in order to begin an amateur karting career.

His first experience racing cars was in Italian Formula Renault Campus in 1997; he won the title in 1998 and moved on to European Formula Renault 2.0. He won the European title in 1999 and moved on to British Formula 3, where he came fifth in 2000 and fourth in 2001. After racing in various similar European series like the Euro Formula 3000, he caught the attention of Minardi, for whom he tested in 2003; the biggest struggle of his career, however, was finding enough sponsorship to compete for Minardi in 2004.

Bruni did, in fact, join Minardi for the 2004 Formula One season, though he struggled in a car which was considerably less developed than the rest of the grid. He was one of only two drivers to contest the majority of the season without scoring any World Championship points.

In 2005, Bruni competed in the GP2 Series, a single-seater championship which is part of the F1 support package and which is intended to be its feeder series. He won his first GP2 race in Barcelona on the 7 May. Bruni left the Coloni GP2 team in September, just before the races at Monza. Joining up with the Durango team, Bruni started on pole position for the next event at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium.

Bruni competed in the 2006 GP2 Series for the new Trident Racing team. He won two races for the team, the feature race at Imola and the feature race at Hockenheim.

For 2007, he switched to the sportscar racing as he joined the FIA GT Championship with Team AF Corse MOTOROLA in a Ferrari 430 GT3. He and his teammate Stéphane Ortelli finished the season 2nd in the GT2 class with 3 wins.

After competing in the American Le Mans Series for Risi Competizione, Bruni shifted focus to Europe for 2011, teaming with Giancarlo Fisichella in an AF Corse Ferrari F458 Italia, winning the driver's and team's championship in the LM GTE Pro class of the Le Mans Series and helping win the team's championship in the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup. Bruni finished 2nd at the Le Mans 24hrs and won the Petit Le Mans. At the 2012 12 Hours of Sebring, Bruni disqualified his car by attempting to shunt off the BMW M3 GT of Joey Hand on the last lap to help the sister car of Olivier Beretta (though the car would not have finished anyways because it did not make 70% of the race leader's distance).

In the 80th edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2012, Bruni and the AF Corse Team scored first place in the GTE-Pro class along with his co-drivers Toni Vilander and Giancarlo Fisichella; their Ferrari 458 Italia covered a total of 336 laps (2,845.53 miles) of the Circuit de la Sarthe.