Ferrari Pilota Avanzato course & factory visit

I attended the Fiorano Avanzato driving course on June 9 & 10. For those interested in my little report on the first course:
http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1355.
Hope this will be of interest for some.
Sorry no pics, strictly forbidden to take any pics while on the premises.
Paranoia ...
I will have a couple of divx video clips, if someone wants to land a helping hand to host them, pls PM me

As much as my experience from the basic course in Mugello had been so-so, as much did I reallllllly enjoy myself in Fiorano.
The venue itself is a lot nicer, the Fiorano facilities are magnificent: comfortable, immaculate, and with an atmosphere which makes you feel like you have a race track around a garden lawn. You don't get this feeling of desert emptiness as in these large GP facilities.

Simply put, I had a blast, and I learned a lot of new things.
Mugello was useful, Fiorano was very useful AND great fun. The basic course puts a lot of emphasis on quality (driving clean), the Avanzato course is focused on driving faster while staying clean.
If your basics are right, the instructors (great, talented guys) will spot your specific flaws and work with you so that you overcome them. The guys are really good, so you ought to listen and trust what they say.

The course uses the original slow variant i.e. skips the 'Schmumacher' parabolica at the end of the pit straight to use, instead, a tight hairpin (with a slightly bent braking zone) followed by a left-right S where you merge with the exit of the parabolica.
The track is probably more technical and interesting that way, but also a lot slower, so any comparison with reference Fiorano lap times is impossible (and probably intentional).

For a part of the first day, the second hairpin is reserved for power oversteer exercizes, so a cone chicane is added to slow you down to a bypass.
Another cone chicane stays on the pitlane to slow you down (you wind down in 4th at redline with both 575 and 360 at the breaking point).
The result is that the track is mostly driven in 3rd and 4th on 575s, 360s taking both hairpins in 2nd, and the 575 only the 2nd one (torrrrque).

All the cars were there, four 575 (2 F1, 2 manuals) and a host of 360 (F1 and manuals too). Only 12 participants (brochure says 20), which was great, and translated into a major improvement over Mugello: you get to do 3, 4 then 5 flying laps in a row (brake fluid begs for mercy at that point anyway with a very spongy pedal feel), compared to the 2-3 half or full laps in Mugello which were frustrating. Changing back and forth from such different cars takes a lap to adjust, so you still have quality time after that.

Instructors both seat with you in the car (most useful) and in front in pace cars, the good old Alfa 3.0 GTVs in slicks (too slow at the end of the course), and ... a CS. I went for 5 laps as a passenger to my instructor in the CS, the difference in breaking points is simply stunning. Cornering speed is much higher too. There's a mighty difference compared to a stock 360F1. On a side note, this CS had normal 3 point belts and I found the seat way too wide to hold me (OK, i am thin). Sports seats without 4 point harness = big mistake. A 575 had a 4 point harness on a standard seat, leather disaster ...

So what did we do ? A bit of driving, a lot more than in Mugello: 38 laps on the first day, 26 on the second day. Other activities included:
- power oversteer on hairpin exit in 1st gear on wet surface, very similar to Mugello (no donuts though :-( )
- timed exercize on a "simple" left-right S, to show how tenth melt away in understeer/oversteer
- a race against the clock on a short circuit made of the parabolica, the first hairpin and the second hairpin through the bypasses (4 trials, the first one with a 360 manual, the 3 others on F1s). Interestingly, everybody's time dropped by 4 seconds (1'30"-1'32" to 1.25"-1.28" - here again, nothing to do with Fiorano reference lap times), when jumping from a manual to a F1. When acceleration counts, you can slam the box as fast as you want, you're just not as fast as the F1 box in sports mode. It is possible that the 2 manual cars were a bit more tired than the 2 360 F1's, the F1s were a lot louder too.

The course advertises telemetry a lot, but you get to do 4 sessions over the 2 days because only 2 cars are equipped (a Modena and a Maranello). It's a semi wireless telemetry in the sense that in Fiorano, the telemetry antenna is located over the bridge. This is why turn 1 is ... not after the pit straight. Once triggered, telemetry is actually an in board data logger which is then downloaded after your laps through a PC using a cable inside the pits box. Six parameters are recorded (compared to 420 on a Formula 1 ... ), but they are a very interesting complement to the qualitative comments you get from instructors. Although all laps are recorded, one is printed against a reference lap (they show you a faster lap, but they don't show you a really fast lap. Probably not to preserve your ego, but rather to avoid putting you under pressure and entice you to take more risks.

I have no clue what my colleagues did on the track (the only reference I have is the race-against-the-clock times), but at the end of the course I was clocking consistent 1'44" humble laps, so they printed my lap against a 1'42" instructor lap ... but a friendly instructor showed me (he was not supposed to) a real fast lap in 1'39". Five full seconds, that's steep.

To note, almost no difference between a 575F1 and a 360F1. Might sound surprising, but the 575's torque pulls you out from mid-range corners like a bullet, and I am clearly not at the level where I can get an edge from the 360's higher agility and probably better breaking. Lateral grip does not feel radically different though, the 575 (with Fiorano kit) remains a very well-sorted car for such a barge.
Telemetry is interesting in many way. The comparison of steering angle shows whether your line is right, reveals any hint of understeer or oversteer, and then to diagnose the root cause (too fast at turn in, brake profile incorrect, brutal throttle application, etc ...
Once your lines and steering inputs are right, a lot of emphasis is put on braking and acceleration profiles. Here again, quality, quality, quality.

A minor comment: The location of the Hotel (Real Fini) in Modena is not optimal considering the 45 minutes commute in the morning and in the evening, stuck in these country side traffic jams which are an Italian trademark. Wondering why, with all visitors drawn to this place between press, customers, visitors of any kind, there can't be a good "Ferrari acquainted" hotel closer to or even in Maranello.

So overall, I had a very good and, I believe, useful time. Do I recommend ?
Yes, but ...
I throw a caution flag on the fact that these courses may vary greatly depending on a number of factors, so there's a bit of luck involved (the same course with 20 dudes instead of 12 would have been quite different).
Some fellow participants did Mugello under the rain, and it was not fun given the exteme measures put in place to avoid cars ending in the gravel beds.
Value for moneym if it matters to you, is still a question mark (like for many Ferrari things), I am pretty sure that there can be ways to get as good a training for a lot less money. Certainly less glamourous, but alternatives are worth looking at. There is a cost to running a course with such expensive cars and with instructors with commendable pedigree, and the venues are expensive too. The course itself is not run by Ferrari per se (although they are the contracting party), but subcontracted to Andrea de Adamich's own private driving school (http://www.guidasicura.com/).
Lastly, you've better not think too much about the papers you must sign on
location prior to entering the course. Beside "normal" waivers of liability for the organizer, you sign up to indemnify them in the event you cause damage to the property or cars. An attorney would have to read carefully to determine if the 0.5m€ insurrance covers only injuries/death, or includes material damage. Very unclear as it is spread on a set of several exhibits.
Worse, you don't even get a copy ...

OTHER BITS
On the first day, a white Maserati MC12 stradale came by to make a few laps during a break. The car design is not my cup of tea, and the pilot spun
A (the ?) mule of the 600 Imola came by, the little there is to say is posted in the corresponding model section:
http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=67324237&postcount=26
We had a "people" moment with the landing of Luca Di Montezemolo's helicopter and a distant glimpse of the man, he just stayed on location for an hour.

We had a visit (kind of) of the Ferrari factory, but unlike my previous visit last November, the final assembly line was not visible, "under works". Not sure if this is true, if there are things there that they don't want us to see (like a proto batch of 420's for instance). So instead we visited the new engine machining building which is at the far north of the site, beside the wind tunnel. Interesting visit, but not breathtaking.
The building is nicely architectured, and there are a few cars and engines on display, among which an Enzo engine, an F40 and a 288GTO Evoluzione. A detail I noticed on the Enzo engine, the quality of the exhaust manifold outlet was truly catastrophic, don't understand who they can put something like this on display. The 355 which went around the world (http://www.wwp-diemen.nl/ferrari/worldtou.htm, did not find another link) is also on display there.
The engine plant machines all Ferrari and Maserati road car engines blocks and heads. There is clearly a lot of room for expansion, both in terms of capacity (they run only 1 shift except in the foundry where 2 day shifts are run) but also in terms of space. Waiting for Maserati sales to take off ...
There is also a new painting plant which was just completed 2w ago. Hostess
(very knowledgeable btw, not a tourist tour parrot) said that "if the plant runs well", Maserati will be painted in Maranello too.
Another funny comment the guide made: she expects Maserati to eventually
move to a capped production model too (at a higher volume than Ferrari of course). No volume growth business plan like Porsche then ?

A few misc notes I took:
- all the aluminium foundry work is done in the Maranello plant (blocks, heads) while steel foundry (crankshafts) is done offsite but machined in house
- crankshafts undergo such stress during machining (they lose 75% of their raw weight in the process) that most end up being warped or unbalanced. They are heated then adjusted by hand with hammers (!) until balancing is adequate.
- the plant is stuffed with large CNC centers, but feeding heads and blocks is still done by hand. Conveyors are suprisingly coarse, scary to see freshly machined heads moved around like this
- the big attraction of the plant is the valve guide assembly in the heads,
which is robotized. A robot holds the head while another one dips the guides into liquid nitrogen (-196degC) to shrink them before putting them on the press. Nice but they could run twice faster with a second valve guide lacement robot ...
- Enzo production is scheduled to end in September, still running at 1 car per day, The normal assembly line still has a capacity of 17 cars per day, 12 V8s and 5 V12s (+ an Enzo)
- in terms of quality management, everything is labelled or color coded, ISO-9000 style, but I saw no evidence of lot traceability.

I am attaching a couple telemetry charts (disclaimer, I ain't no Schumi), track map with suggested gears for 360/575, and the corner numbers for the telemetry charts.

 

http://www.owners.ferrari.com
Basic course mandatory prior to advanced course.