Ferrari Precedes the PreHistorics

During Monterey's internationally famous Car Week (August 11-17) the "best kept secret" (one it seems which everyone already knows about) is actually a prelude, a rehearsal, that has been open to the public for years, but little talked about outside the outer rings of the Inner Circles. I'm talking about a non-event which has come to be called by locals as the "Pre-Historics". No, its not racing by Fred Flintstone and Barney rubble, it is literally the arrival, staging and practice races for the Big Event, the Monterey Historic Races. I don't need to say that the Historics is a must-see-in-your-lifetime event for any car buff. You already know that. But what you don't know is that the weekend before The Historics, all the big trucks hosting the "arrive and drive" museum pieces and many of the individual entrants arrive to sort out their cars.

What you get in this "dress rehearsal" is 80% of the show, at %5 of the cost and only 1% of the crowds. The reason for this apparent anomaly during what can be a very costy car vacation (3-day tickets run $145) to the Historics run is that there is no event. Its just practice. The Laguna Seca track is within a Monterey County Park. Open to the public. So you pay your $6/car parking fee and you've got a literal front-row seat. Or turn 3 seat. Or corkscrew seat.

Up until this year (no idea what may happen in years hence) you also had full access to the paddocks. Paddock access is one of the great lures to The Historics. You can walk up and peer right into the cockpit of millions of dollars and decades of history worth of racing cars. The cars trundle through on their way to and from the grid around your knees. The smells and sounds are right there. Engine covers open, wheels off. If you're a car tech geek it is nothing less than pornography.

This Year, a pre-Game Show: Ferrari

Sadly, this year, the Ferrari North America "had the track for the weekend" as we were told by many yellow-shirted "Hospitality" guides (all of which looked like they were daylighting from their bar bouncer jobs). One had to have pre-registered with the Ferrari Club to get the appropriate badging and wristbands to raise one above the hoi polloi. Or you had to be on a "driver's list". Meaning a Historics registrant had to have put you on the equiv of a nightclub "guest list" in advance. It would appear that our impromptu tour of the automotive eye candy was at an end.

With the Ferrari Club holding court, and my friends in the 356 Club having not arrived, we were relegated to outside the paddock fencing. It was a small loss, as the entire track, including all the grandstands, the souvenir store and even the track burger grill were open to us. And by "us" I'm talking about several hundred (not thousands--hundreds) of spectators. Most of whom were there to watch the Ferrari club.

Not Impressed by Ferraris? Try this out.

While I appreciate Ferrari, I'm not a fan. They are, to me, unapproachable. I may feel different after my first million (I once read that the average Ferarri owner has a net work of about $5 million--but I wonder about the standard deviation from that figure), but there's just nothing middle class about Ferrari. I can, from the middle class, approach a car that retails at $100k, but to consider $250k and above is to say that my retirement and family's need to eat, oh, and our medical insurance, are all secondary to the siren lure of the Maranello 12cyl. Seeing them in the parking lots left me.....ehhh? I saw a Nissan GTR, my first in-the-wild spotting of this distinctly middle class supercar. That was worth two pictures. The '85 Testarossa and the '06 Scaglietti which bookended the Nissan barely rated a second look.

That said, you cannot be unimpressed by Ferarris on the racetrack. They put on a pretty good show when they're moving, and then there's the sound. Have to admit, there's nothing like it. I'm not seduced by the Siren's lure, but it does turn my head. For our entertainment, there were two heats of a cup race that appeared to be run by a flock of F430 Stradale. I call them a flock because they were much to civilized to be called a "swarm". I expected them to be both buzzier and louder. The sound restriction (92db) was lifted for the weekend, but these cars sounded like they could roll down Highway 1--their clear race livery withstanding.

Above you see a Ferrari pace car leading a couple other Ferrari into the corkscrew. My favorite of this flock of F430s was the one painted in Wyler Gulf-like colors, compleat with a Porsche 908/03 "flounder" spyder arrow (Targia Florio paint scheme). Compare Dan Watkins' reproduction 430 paint with the original 908/03 from a bit north of the Scuderia:

Next up were the very impressive Ferrari Enzo FXX race-prepared models. The FXX is Ferrari's top of the top-of-the-line Enzo series. It is a very exclusive club, numbering only 30, whose members include none other than Michael Schumacher hisself.

So imagine our surprise to find not an Enzo, but SIX! Enzo FXX models on the track and racing at song. Quite a treat. Below is a PhotoShop Express album of the nineteen pictures I took of these spectacular cars.

But that's not all.
Like a multi-gazillion dollar Ginzu commercial, the Ferrari kept coming. After another Challenge round which was unfortunately greatly abbreviated by a number of full-course cautions, on lap one and lap seven, a spectacle that could top even the mighty Enzo FXX took the course. What is at the very top, the pinnacle of the Scuderia food chain? Why, the F1 cars, of course. I was only able to identify two of the three "F1 Corse Clienti" cars. They were F2002 models, Vodaphone livery. They were fast, and gloriously pitched.

The below picture is by Andrew Wong and is very nice. Click the image to go to Andrew's Flickr album of the event.

After that, the Ferrari were done. Oh, there was another round of the "FXX Program", but as one of our party remarked over hamburgers consumed at the outside of the 3-4 chute, "Oh, we're having lunch and there go some Ferrari FXXes. Ah, but we've seen that before, so we'll just keep on with our lunch." And it was rather like that. After seeing the F1 cars, even the quite amazing FXX is slightly mundane. Perhaps that's the alure. Perhaps when you're driving a Ferrari, every other car is slightly mundane. Perhaps some day I'll find out if that's true. Perhaps I hope I don't.