Multi-Talented: From World Cup winner and star goalkeeper for Manchester United to motor racing champion in a 200mph Ferrari, here's France legend Fabien Barthez as you've never seen him before

Former Manchester United and France goalkeeper Fabien Barthez has been crowned champion of France’s GT motorsport series. Barthez and Sofrev ASP team-mate Morgan Moullin-Traffort finished fifth and eighth in the last two races of the series' final weekend at the Paul Ricard circuit to seal the championship by 21 points.

DRIVING AMBITION

The French GT championship is among the most competitive in European motor racing. It features a host of world-renowned car manufacturers from Aston Martin, Ferrari and Porsche.

Barthez‘s Ferrari 458 is capable of top speeds of 202mph and can reach 60mph in just three seconds. But it will cost you.

The motor retails at a whopping £200,000. AUTOCAR recently ranked the Ferrari 458 Italia as the world’s best supercar ahead of the McLaren 12C, Mercedes-Benz SLS and Audi R8.

The field for the series featured nine-time world rally championship winner Sebastien Loeb.

Barthez and Moullin-Traffort won four races in the 2013 series in their Ferrari 458 Italia GT - which can travel up to 200mph - and stood on seven podiums. 

The Ferrari is a similar model to the one driven by the likes of John Terry and Frank Lampard around the streets of London. Barthez, 42, only began a career in motorsport in 2008 after retiring from football a year earlier.

The 87-cap international told Le Mans live: ‘I have always been fascinated by motorsport, even when I was playing football. It always intrigued me. ‘I wanted to understand what it felt like being in a car. I had to wait until the end of my pro career to try it.

'That said, it’s not like football: you can still be good even when you are 35, which was my age when I stopped playing.’ He has also admitted to considering entering the Le Mans 24-hour race. Barthez said: 'Le Mans is something else altogether.

'Would I like to do the Le Mans 24 Hours one day? I don’t know yet. Maybe I won’t like the experience, or I won’t be good enough. We’ll see…'

Barthez was rated among the world's best goalkeepers in the late 1990s and won the World Cup with France in 1998 before moving to United in 2000.

He did not hit the heights expected of him while at Old Trafford, however, and was loaned out to Marseille in 2003 before joining the French club permanently a year later.

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