Ferrari visits and Club GT Events

Evening all,

I haven't posted for a long time and thought I would share some thoughts, pictures and videos from last years ('07) event.

In July, despite a huge amount of bureaucracy from Ferrari, I managed to arrange a factory tour for my drivers in Modena during the event. We were only a small group consisting of 15 drivers but the amount of hard work it took to get in... First of all I was told that the maximum number of entrants was 15 and that 5 of these had to be owners. Luckily enough, although only 2 Ferraris came on the event (F360 + F430), we did have 5 owners. Then I was told that, because one of the owners was driving a Porsche, he would not be able to park at the factory. This despite the 3 Ferraris he had back at home! To say he was unhappy is a major understatement... It was comical and I am sure many of you think it right, but of all of the factories I have visited, supercars included, this didn't seem a particularly friendly approach. How does it defer from the Ferrari brand having Lamborghinis, Aston Martins and Porsches parked outside? I would have thought it would be quite a compliment to have other supercars there?

Anyway, we got in and had a fantastic tour. Following on from the Porsche tour a few days earlier and the Pagani tour earlier that day (we met Horacio again), it was great seeing the differences from a robot driven factory in Leipzig and a handmade factory at Pagani, to Ferrari's way of doing things. Aside from all of the beautiful cars simply everywhere, we saw a Scuderia on the factory floor (this was July). As we walked up the line we stopped and looked over the exhaust arrangement and gold (!?) wheels and then on our return, it was mysteriously covered up. I guess they weren't expecting us!

Over the week, the 360 was again faultless. The 430 developed a habit of jumping out of gear (F1) so we had to divert it to the Bologna Ferrari dealer late one evening at short notice. The piece of metal between the engine block had "fallen" out! Mechanics stayed at work till past 9 p.m. machining a piece of aluminum which not only corrected the problem but saw the car drive a further 2000k faultlessly back to Spain. Very impressed by the Ferrari network. We also managed to get a cheeky picture of all of the cars outside The Galleria which you can see on the homepage of the website.

Unfortunately this year ('08), both of the Ferrari drivers are coming in different cars. The F360 will be replaced by a 997 GT3 RS (I hear the collective groan) and the F430 will potentially be replaced by a Murcielago. Having said that, I am hoping that one of the other drivers will be coming in either his 599 GTB or Scuderia. Both cars have not yet arrived and if they don't, it could be the Superleggera. I can think of worse cars to spend a week hooning around Europe in...

No factory tours this year though. We have visited Ferrari twice in succession now as well as Pagani, so this year we won't be stopping at any factories. Instead, we have invited Gumpert to bring The Apollo to our exclusive trackday and they have obliged with one or possibly even two cars for the participants to drive - bring it on! With performance to shade even a 599, I am rather looking forward to driving it.

As always there are some new videos up on the website. On the 2006 page there is a Galleria video I put together and on the 2007 page there is a general video of the whole event. I'll be sure to film and photograph this year's event and will be much quicker to get them up onto Ferrarichat.

Best,

Kevin