Car Club USA heads to Florida for the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona, but for the Ferrari Club of America, the real fun begins the day after the storied endurance race. Ferrari owners from across the country gather every year to cheer on the pros on race day, and then takeover the track themselves to get a chance to run their Italian Stallions at speed.
Watch as owners of a 458 Italia, 430 Scuderia and genuine Momo world sportscar to the track to enjoy their Ferrari's and improve their lap times.
- Ferrari's all have Formula 1 DNA in them. So all of the cars have the soul of a racer.
- The high banking at Daytona is like nothing else. You get onto that 31 degree banking-- it's mind boggling.
- As you approach 200 miles an hour, your vision starts to narrow and it becomes a tunnel vision.
- When I pull the paddle to upshift it's as if the hammer of Thor has hit the back of the car. And it happens again, and again, and again.
- So you've got adrenaline running, you're on a bank, and that motor is screaming at 9,000 RPM. It's a combination of all those things that is that soul of Ferrari.
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AL DELAURO: I've always been a Ferrari fanatic. Frankly, since 1959, 1960, I used to read Sports Car Illustrated and all the rest of those cool magazines and never thought any of that would be real. And then life happened. And when I turned 50, circumstances were such that I was able to actually order a Ferrari and pick it up at the factory. It was certifiably cool.
JOE ADAMS: My grandfather, whenever we would go visit him, he would always take me out and would buy me a model car of some type. One year he bought me a 250 GTO, and I thought that was the coolest car I had ever seen, bar none. So I told my grandfather, I said, you know, someday I'm going to have one of these. And he said that's a real good goal to have. When I sold my first company, the very first thing that I got was a 308 GTSi, and that was my first Ferrari. And since then I'm on my seventh one.
STEVE SELZ: The key to the Ferrari club is that we're a bunch of like minded people. We're a bunch of enthusiasts who really have a passion for the Ferrari MAR. My father was the one who got me into Ferraris, and I went to my first Ferrari Club event when I was 10 years old. He continues to share the experience with me. He actually comes to the track events with me, and my son also enjoys it. So now we actually do these events as three generations, coming here and enjoying the cars and participating in the event itself.
JOE ADAMS: This weekend is the Rolex 24 hour race, which is one of the biggest sports car races of the year. The club comes down to support the Ferrari effort. After the race we will take over the Daytona International Speedway and run the Rolex 24 road course.
STEVE SELZ: The great thing about having a track event here at Daytona is that our members get to really enjoy the same experience the drivers had in the race. And I think it really expands their appreciation for not only the talent these guys have, but also for the car and what the cars can do. And it really shows the amazing engineering that Ferrari automobiles have.
AL DELAURO: It was really a great day. Ferrari didn't win, they were 4th and 5th in class, but that's racing. Well we've just finished talking about the race, but for members of the Ferrari Club of America, a whole new event is about to begin. We've stopped watching other people on track running their cars at speed, and starting tomorrow first thing we're going to be on track running our cars at speed. And I can't wait for tomorrow morning to happen.
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STEVE SELZ: Morning.
- Morning.
STEVE SELZ: How's it going?
- Hey, Steve, how are you doing?
STEVE SELZ: Nice seeing you.
- Nice to see you too.
STEVE SELZ: If you want, just pull it over to that first row, we're going to go ahead and [? tech ?] them. Putting on any event is always a lot of work, but in this case it's a labor of love. And I've been a member or involved with the Ferrari Club since I was 10, this is really a big part of my life and what I do. Giving other people an opportunity to enjoy their cars in a historic setting is something that gives me a lot of inherent reward. That's the kind of thing that keeps me doing this.
JOE ADAMS: On the banking down here, 140 150 is like nothing. Today I'm going to be working on being real smooth. Mostly on the infield section, that's where you can gain the most speed coming in and going out of the corners but yet experience that 9,000 RPM, 9,000 RPM. That's really what the fun stuff is.
STEVE SELZ: If you've driven here before you know a lot about Daytona, hopefully. It's very challenging in some ways but a fun track to drive. 458's here will hit in excess of 180 miles an hour. If you make a mistake, it's a big mistake.
JOE ADAMS: You can go as fast here as your car can go. This will satiate your will and interest in going triple digits for the rest of the year. And if somebody in a Mustang pulls up and wants to race you, you're going to look at him and go, well, I'm not going to go over 195, so. Learn something about the car, enjoy it, and then you don't have to worry about doing anything crazy on a public road after you do something here at Daytona.
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STEVE SELZ: Ferrari I'll be driving is actually a sports prototype car. It was developed originally as a Nissan GTP car, and then when Nissan abandoned the program it was converted to a Ferrari powered world sports car and raced in Sebring in the late '90's. The car itself has a 348 Ferrari motor in it, putting on approximately 520 horsepower, and the car weighs about 1,800 pounds. So the power to weight ratio would be like putting a 500 horsepower engine in a VW [? Golf. ?] This is designed for one purpose, and one purpose only, and that is to attack the track and go as fast as it can possibly go.
JOE ADAMS: The 458 me has over 572 horsepower, the car does 0 to 60 in 3.2 seconds. The engine is a 4.5 liter V8 that is designed to shift at 9,000 RPM. So that's not the red line, that's where you shift it. You wind it up to 9,000, it's got a dual clutch transmission. You hit the paddle and you're going, at least at this track, 180 miles an hour in a matter of seconds.
AL DELAURO: My Ferrari is a 2008 430 Scuderia. It has 504 horsepower at 8,500 RPM, so it's a very high speed engine. If you take a look at the size of the brakes on this car, they are enormous. The clearance between the caliper and the wheel is sort of half the thickness of my pinky. They simply couldn't fit a bigger brake in here. So when you activate these things it's a controlled crash.
It's a caged beast. When you start this car, you feel as if you're riding an animal. And it's very obedient, you can toodle around town in it. But you call on it to respond, the excitement level that it generates is just overwhelming.
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I'm pretty much focused on smoothness and skill, and with that comes speed. But I'm not going to go out there and try to go fast, I'm going to try to smoothly hit all my marks. I'll start slowly and build my speed during the day. I almost forgot how steep this banking is. I got up on it for the first time and I wondered if they had made it steeper since I was here last year. But then your body starts to come back in, and you start to remember.
JOE ADAMS: The idea that you can go out and buy a car that will do 200 miles an hour is a romantic idea, but in reality, the only way to learn about the car is on a track. You can see the racing line because we're one day removed from the 24 hour Rolex race. So what you want to do is stay as close to that race line as possible while carrying speed, and get it to the point where you don't have to jam on the brakes to save yourself from going off, or accelerate too quickly out of the corner so that you slide instead of taking traction all the way through from the apex on.
I haven't had anybody try to pass me, which is a good thing. The last session I was smoother than the one before, and the one before. So each one I've seen improvement.
AL DELAURO: As I was hoping, as I got more comfortable with the track the speed sort of came up automatically. Great fun. It's the car at its best, and I just couldn't be more pleased.
This weekend has been everything that I was hoping it would have been plus more. The familiarity came back, the smoothness came back, and the speeds were fun. It's just another fabulous day on track with the Ferrari Club of America.
STEVE SELZ: The Ferrari club is just about that. It's about the sharing of the enthusiasm for the mark, but also the camaraderie. Well I've got to say this weekend was an extremely successful weekend. My perspective is that if people come out here, they have a good time, they get to enjoy their cars, and no one wrecks anything, then it's a good weekend for me. And I received nothing but compliments this weekend. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves thoroughly.
JOE ADAMS: The experience of Daytona is like no other. As the day wore on, I got faster and faster. By the end of the day I had a real good rhythm going. If you got it right you can almost let go of the wheel at 160 miles an hour and it will just go straight along the banking. A Ferrari has a soul. And when you get out there on the track, you're able to touch that soul. And that's what we did today, and that's what makes this whole thing worthwhile. This is what the Ferrari Club is all about.
