track day at imola

my friend and i drove down to participate in the track day at imola sponsored by the ferrari club of italy. they were also having their trofeo time trials, so there were quite a few hardcore track rats there with their mean machines. we had a good time as well during the free lap sessions, and i only spun once, but right about where senna died so that didnt feel great. the trip to and from was a long slog, but when it was traffic free we could really let'er rip so the 600 km didnt take us that long to cover....gotta love italian's cops and their passion for the local industry !!
here are some pics of the parking lot at naldi's from the night before (think there is a ferrari thing going on?), the parking lot at the track, the pit lane, the boxes, the track, cars at speed, a challenge car there to show us how its done, me and my cs, some pics of the trip home:
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i have more pics but they are similar to the selection i put up the first time.
forgot to put up the times...the cs's were managing between 2:12 - 2:16, and the scuds were 2:02- 2:05, so they were faster, but obviously there are a lot of variables to this besides the fact that some of these guys had some serious setups and great tires - that new pirelli trofeo is very sticky !

the food was great of course, as was the weather. very well organized for italy, and good value. the trip to and from was too long to be doing this every weekend but was worth it for one time.

my cs got pretty hot pretty quickly, and then the gearbox started to not react to inputs, up or down. this was pretty annoying, and i asked the mechanics provided on site, and they explained that either i was driving it too hard by overrevving too often etc, or the electro valve was leaking too much liquid, or the pump was failing to keep up sufficient pressure under stress. after dialing myself back a bit i think i may have been the cause, since we also didnt see any leaks. the other cs drivers and even a few scud drivers complained of the same thing. my tires were determined to be too old at 3 years, and had dried out too far (note to self change tires before going to mugello in sep), so best time i posted was about 2:20 (plus this was my first time there and imola is not for the faint of heart i discovered quickly ! my very experienced friend (holds the amateur record time at the ring in a corvette) managed a 2:15 driving my car at about 85% since he didnt trust the tires. btw, he hated the cc brakes, and we later discovered that most of the hard core italian scuds had switched to steel discs as they believe this provides much better braking. fwiw
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ah, you spotted the ACM shirt ! yes, i have the normal shirt version in red too.