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Racing Ferraris in the Rain
Keeping up with a pro in a 458 Italia makes for a memorable day.
There’s something already inherently nerve-shredding about taking someone else’s quarter-million-dollar supercar and letting it all hang out on a race track. Add heavy rain and you’re tempting a mental meltdown. And so it was on a recent gray day at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif., when Ferrari of San Francisco organized an event driving Ferrari 458 Italias for a few dozen clients, would-be clients and one fortunate journalist. The result? Thanks to that rain, one of the most memorable driving days ever.
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First, some scene setting. That Ferraris have long been bred for track use is common knowledge. Famously, Enzo Ferrari built road cars just to finance his Formula One racing efforts. That attitude still persists with much of the company’s product line, particularly when it comes to the new 599 GTO, the granddaddy of the V-12 line-up, and the 458 Italia, a V-8 rocket that racers and pundits alike feel is a quantum, F1-inspired leap ahead of its predecessor, the eminently capable F430.
But these are tough economic times, and Ferrari is feeling the heat along with the rest of the auto world. As a result, the fabled firm from Maranello is taking a two-pronged approach to keeping customers happy. The first is to create vehicles that actually conform to their clients’ lifestyles; with its folding hardtop, the California is aimed squarely at the women in the family, while the genuine 2+2 seating in the forthcoming-if-oddly shaped, four-wheel-drive FF has designs on marque faithful who have children and want to go skiing.
“We are providing consumable luxury now, not just toys,” says Greg Minor, president of Ferrari of San Francisco, whose terracotta-roofed dealership looks as if it was air-lifted out of the Tuscan countryside (in fact, it was for many years the only U.S. dealership owned by Ferrari). “The California is a particularly big hit for us. Women who wouldn’t consider heading to a track in one of our other models will gladly hop in a California and drive away.”
