MMy Ferrari Challenge Experience

[G.Irish]

How it happened

So a few months ago when we toured the Ferrari of Washington shop I chatted with the race manager a bit about the cars and racing and what not. Towards the end of our conversation he said he needed volunteers for the crew and would I be interested. So he told me to come meet up with him later to talk about specifics. At the time I was a bit on the fence. Crewing is a lot of work and I wasn't sure if I was going to have to pay my way to get to the far away races like the Canadian GP or Infineon.

Well when I sat down to chat with Arnie he told me they'd take care of airfare, hotel, and food. All they needed was my sweat and committment.

Orientation
I decided to go for it and one of my coworkers Kevin who was really interested decided to join me. We started out with an orientation with the cars at the dealership where Arnie showed us how the airjacks work and how to remove and put on wheels (they are one lugs with directionally-threaded studs). He also gave us the low down on the major features of the car like the data acquisition system, ECU, and all of the technowizardry in the car. So for instance, the computer in the car can bleed the brakes and clutch by itself. They don't use this feature for the brakes though because apparently it ends up burning out the ABS solenoid.

Before we left the orientation we got to see an in car video from their test at Infineon in February. Only one of their drivers was driving and...he had a tremendous crash. The data logger showed he was going over 100 mph when he left the track. In the video there was the tell tale sound of wide open throttle, the "OH SHIT!" abrupt closing of the throttle, and about a half-second later-BANG! BANG!!! A good portion of the front end was torn off and the car spun and hit the rear too. Luckily the driver walked away. Would this early crash at a test be a harbinger of lots of wadded up Ferraris to come? Yes. Can I get this video on youtube? No.

Season Opener Part 1
So, off we went to Homestead Florida last week for the season opener. This was a special weekend because in addition to 430 Challenge, Ferrari was running two special programs; the FXX Programme and the F1 Clienti program.

We got to the track on Tuesday evening and unloaded the trailer. We only had two cars out for this weekend. One was driven by the owner of Ferrari of Washington. The other was owned by a guy from Annapolis, Skip Bennett. Skip actually owns a Spec E30 and was racing at VIR last month when we were there.

The schedule for the week had 430 challenge driver orientation for the first two days, 430 practice and qualifying on Friday, Race 1 on Saturday, and Race 2 on Sunday. The FXX's and F1 cars ran their sessions on Saturday and Sunday.

Skip and Allie (FoW owner) had driving coaches. One of the coaches was from Speed Secrets, a driving consulting firm formed by Ross Bentley (author of the Speed Secrets books). This guy had done a good bit of racing and apparently did a stint in Formula 1. The other coach had raced since 1974 and raced for a living for quite some time. He had done the 24 Hours of Daytona, 24 Hours of Le Mans, had raced a Porsche 962, did Formula Ford, etc., etc. I really wish I had more time to talk to these guys because they had a ton of racing knowledge.

Put on wheels, put the car up, cleaned the car, cleaned the car, cleaned the car, cleaned the wheels, cleaned the car. I think in one week I did more car cleaning than I've done in three years. I felt like I was in the Karate Kid, "Daniel-san, wax on, wax off. This is very expensive car, I want it to rook fry for the raydeez" Still, one can't complain about wiping down voluptuous and sexy 430 challenge cars all day.

Welp, welcome to episode one of the Wadded Up Super Cars Club. The first car had this cool black and yellow paint scheme and I thought, "Cool, MM Ferrari".



I hadn't gotten a good picture of it but I figured I could get one later. Wrong.



Beached



A few thou in front splitter in a smashed up pile



The ol' banana in the tailpipe gag. The FoW techs were all pretty cool and had a great sense of humor...







This was probably my favorite paint scheme of the 430's, except for one that I'll post in part two...



Homestead raceway is right next to Homestead AFB and the fighters drop down right over the track as they come in to land. The F15's,F16's, F/A-18's, and Harriers would fly out in the morning, come back for lunch, fly out after lunch, then come back for dinner after a long day of playing out in the Gulf of Mexico.



WUSCC #2. This guys team thrashed all night and rewelded the bumper and radiator supports and were able to race the next day.




Nice car, I guess...well, it looks better than the Enzo...









FXX's are kind cool but...





F1 tire technology sure has come a long way =P





I'm not sure if he was driving this FXX the whole time but there was one or two FXX's that were clearly faster than anyone else.
Name that driver:



Part II coming...eventually. I've got a bit of video too.

[Ryan T]

Very nice writeup man, looks like a good time!

[Goodspeed]

Holy mother of god, that is awesome! Were you keeping this a secret until now? Looks like an awesome experience

[JackoliciousLegs]

Holy crap. Looks like a great time. No idea on the driver. I even googled.

[PDenbigh]

W00t! Man that's great! Doesn't it change your perspective of the whole sport?

[ScottyB]

whoa G thats awesome. driver -- Tony Kanaan?

[BLINGMW]

Were you keeping this a secret until now?

psssh, it's Gerald. That's a pretty safe assumption! :lol:

[Andy]

whoa G thats awesome. driver -- Tony Kanaan?

Hard to recognize him without the 7-11 gear though that snoze is hard to miss.

[G.Irish]

W00t! Man that's great! Doesn't it change your perspective of the whole sport?

Well some things I kinda figured, others kinda surprised me.

So for instance, I've always known Ferrari gouges the living daylights out of their customers. Ferrari halon fire bottle: $3000. Off the shelf OMP full halon system: $800. Ferrari tow hook: $400. Front bumper: you don't wanna know. Set of ceramic brakes: $12000. Brake pads: $1800.

Then there's the whole thing about Italians being disorganized. The Ferrari North America parts guy just waltzes in around 10 or 11 and leaves early. Need parts for your wrecked exotic before then? Tough. One of the techs joked that to get that job one should polish up on the fellating skills. When they were gridding up the cars for the race the poor assistant 430 Challenge manager was running around like a wreck trying to grid the cars up and I'm thinking, "NASA grids up two or three times as many cars with no problem."

Something that was cool that I already knew is that racing is an activity revered above all at Ferrari. There is a 6 year waiting list for the entry level Ferrari (currently the 430) but you can get a street car right away if you buy a challenge car. That's actually what one of the newest customer at FoW did. It was some Jamaican dude, we've been joking all week about whether he'll run a Red Stripe paint scheme.

A surprising thing was how skilled the techs were. I knew they had to be pretty well trained to be able to work on all the high-fallutin' gadgets on the cars but these guys can build engines and weld and are pretty well versed in car setup. Glen (the race team manager when we did our first tour) would examine the tires after a session to see how they degraded with heat and how they were used. It seemed like there were a lot of really talented people out there. And even though its basically glorified spec club racing for rich dudes all of the techs really took their jobs seriously.

Another thing that was a bit surprising was that everyone was pretty friendly out there, none of the haughtiness you'd expect. I guess its because everyone there was about the racing, not the posing.

A pleasant surprise was that Lee from VIR was out there. I'm sure some of you remember Lee as the tall crazy old guy from pit out. He works for Grand Am now apparently.

It was a lot of stuff to digest, that's for sure.

[G.Irish]

whoa G thats awesome. driver -- Tony Kanaan?

Hard to recognize him without the 7-11 gear though that snoze is hard to miss.

Yeah I mean to put, "this guy nose how to drive"

I think we need to put together a list of the most recognizable facial features in racing:

Squarest head: David Coulthard


Biggest Jaw: Fernando Alonso


Biggest Nose: Tony Kanaan

Best Goatee: Max Biaggi


Most Zombie-like: Alex Barros


Biggest forehead: Sete Gibernau

[Andy]

Why hasn't someone cast Biaggi as the devil and/or Italian asshole in a movie yet?

[Hunter]

That looks like a damn good time, it makes me wonder if I could teach my car to bleed it's own brakes like a ferrari.

The name tony kanaan popped into my head as soon as I saw that picture, but if you had asked me what tony kanaan looks like I would have had no idea. Apparently my subconscious is really on top of it's game

[Maengelito]

tony kanaan definitely has one of the biggest noses in racing. i think he's got a bunch of E46 M3's and participates semi-regularly (as regularly as any professional racecar driver can) in the east coast euro forum.

anyhow, G you left out biggest afro:

boris said

[Nis01]

Awesome post. Thanks for giving such a great run down of what is happening behind the seens. Looks like a great time.

[Feersty]

How often are you crewing with them? Good use of your vacation from work?

[G.Irish]

I'll be crewing 5 more times this year. Most weekends I'll be leaving Thursday afternoon and only taking Friday off. In that case I can just work extra hours for the rest of the pay period and not use my annual leave.

Last week was different because of the two days of driver orientation.

There's also the possibility that they'll be running a pro race here and there but that depends on whether Grand Am gets their act together on how the 430 Challenge is classed.

[G.Irish]

Race Report
Our driver Skip started race 1 in 10th spot and Allie was in 16th. On the start several of the top 5 got involved in a huge crash at turn 1. Allie jumped up a few spots but apparently passed someone under yellow. Rather than getting it sorted out under full course yellow race control waited until after the green flag before assessing him a penalty so his race was over. Skip actually carved his way all the way up to 5th before spinning off and finished 11th. In doing so he set the third fastest lap of the race.

Race 2 used the finishing positions from Race 1 to set the grid. In Race 2 Skip was able to get back towards the front of the pack. Allie was doing the same when he got hit trying to make a pass. He ended up having to retire with a busted up radiator. Back at the front it was two guys duking it out and gapping everyone until they got into it and both of 'em went off track and off the podium. One of those guy's car actually caught on fire and he DNF'ed.

Mo' pics


333 SP engine. Its kinda wild when there is so much bling at a track that you don't take many pics of a car like the 333




This was the car that belongs to the FoW owner. He was trying to pass another car and got the door slammed on him, which bashed up his bumper and broke one his radiators. The car promptly started overheating and the LCD dash started flashing "Danger to teh manifold!!!" so he had to retire. These guys seemed particularly enamored with our battle damage.


I mentioned this in the Sebring thread but apparently the 430 and 360 are particularly prone to catching on fire. The fire didn't spread too far here but melted the rear lexan and probably vaporized a bunch of the hoses and wired in the engine bay.






This was a girlfriend of one of the drivers. It was funny seeing her do wheelies but she was kinda cheating by letting her legs hang. On the other hand, she was wobbling like a mofo at low speed so maybe keeping her legs down was a good idea...


This guy's car got wrecked the f up in the first turn, first lap melee in the first race. The car had its front bumper and radiator supports torn off and huge dents in the side. The team worked a miracle overnight getting it looking even that good, but they didn't make the race.














This was easily my favorite paintjob out there =P The girl on the hood was a former Playboy Playmate who decided to become an artist. That was actually a self portrait she did. I'm not sure if she actually painted it or if it was a reproduction of a painting she did.


Former Ferrari F1 engineers come support the F1 cars in the F1 Clienti program. Technically brilliant guys but questionable taste in pants and socks.




Worst, tattoo, ever. On top of that it was sunburned.


Note the temp strips on the control arms and end of the gearbox


With the rear diffuser off you can peep the tranny and rear airjack






Ferrari Challenge crew hard at work examining visualizations on Winamp


Ferrari Tech
Here Bryan (also called "Turbo", "Flash", and "Youngblood" by our truck driver to hilarious effect) is bleeding the brakes. Note the LCD dash display and the little module down by his leg. The little module plugs into the car's electronics and wireless transmits all the diagnostic data to the tech's laptop. Most of the diagnostic data can be displayed on the LCD dash though. It also is a hot lap timer.


Here the crew chief of my car is changing the brake pads. The wire coming from one of the pads sitting on the floor connects to the ECU. It tracks pad wear so the techs can know when its time to change pads. Similarly, the ECU keeps track of how much the ceramic brake rotors have been used so they can know when to replace them.


One thing I really liked about the 430's is that they sound like a pair of high revving inline 4's, not unlike what you would hear if you welded two S2000 engines together. And sure enough its not far from the truth. The 430 engine is a flat-crank 90 degree V8 so it basically is a siamese twin four cylinder. But with the 430 the two cylinder banks each have their own ECU and independent fuel pumps. The engine can actually run with just one bank of cylinders running.

[.paul]

G, that is an absolutly incredible experience you have. I am glad you decided to take the opportunity, and it deffly appears you are making the most of it!

thanks for keeping us posted

[ScottyB]

But with the 430 the two cylinder banks each have their own ECU and independent fuel pumps. The engine can actually run with just one bank of cylinders running.

i was particularly amazed when i read this. those italians are so craaaazy.

you must be so desensitized to exotic cars at this point.

[Goodspeed]

G, I know you summarized how you got into all this in your first post, but this is incredible...not to take anything away from all this but is it really that "easy"?? I imagine with your experience background you're definitely a good candidate, but I always thought it was much harder to get behind the scenes of all this. Regardless I'm sure you know that you are living many car guys dreams here. Congrats!