2007-01-01 18:52:51
Here's the trouble with life: You sometimes don't know whether you should do a lot of preparation or none, or whether you should listen to a lot of people or nobody. Not that the opportunity to drive a Ferrari 333S P at Daytona could ever under any circumstances be considered a trouble in life. But I had Derek Bell telling me, "It’s the sweetest car I've ever driven," and sports car-wise, he's driven them all. I had Paul Gentilozzi telling me, "It'll put your butt around quicker than any race car you can imagine." And he didn't mean around the track.
This particular Ferrari 333SP was sister to the Momo Ferrari that Didier Theys put on the pole for the 1996 Daytona 24-hour, at a speed of 126.61 mph. It was owned by Gianpiero Moretti and Gerry Jackson, who invited me to drive a few laps in the car at Daytona and share the experience.
Didier Theys guides Jackson’s racing, co-driving with in in endurance events. Jackson calls Theys "the professor" because he’s so anyalytical. He's a testing machine," says Jack son . "He will run lap after lap, within tenths of a second of each other, and be full of information afterward."
The Ferrari is powered by a 60-valve V12displacing 4.0 liters and making 650 horsepower with 400 pound-feet of torque. It's mounted behind the flat-bottomed Dallara monocoque tub, which is made of aluminum honeycomb and carbon fiber and serves as a stressed element of the chassis. Bolted to the engine are the double wishbone rear suspension and the transverse-mounted five-speed sequential gear box. The car weighs 1956 pounds.
Jackson had been running the car at Daytona partly to test Yokahama tires. The test was managed by Kevin Doran, the ex-Holbert Racing crew chief who prepares both the Momo and Lista Ferraris, and in three days, six drivers had been behind the wheel. Derek Bell had just climbed out when I arrived. Bell is regarded by many as the world's greatest long-distance driver, with five wins at Le Mansand three at Daytona, and before that he raced F1. He had gotten 19 laps in the car, his first solid time with a 333SP, and he said it was magic.
"It's so exhilarating to drive a real racing car like this," Bell said, still starry-eyed. "This car is so much better than the McLaren [which he drove to third at Le Mansin 1995 and sixth in 1996] . The McLaren is a fabulous machine, but at the end of the day it's still a road car. Even the Porsche 962s I' ve raced weren 't as wonderfully twitchy and nervous as this Ferrari."
Bell took me around the circuit in the Audi A4, talking me through a lap in the Ferrari. Paul Gentilozzi, who had driven a 333SP at Daytona in 1995, had done the same, over the phone. There were substantial differences in their descriptions, mostly because the engine has gone through many changes in its three years, and Gentilozzi drove the first iteration. Apparently, it won't put your butt around so quickly any more, because the powerband has been broadened.
Bell and Gentilozzi agreed that the hardest thing about driving the car was downshifting. The clutch is not used with this sequential gearbox (except for pulling away from a stop), and it takes some practice to time the throttle blip so that the engine revs match the spinning gearbox teeth; if you're too early, or if the blip is too big or too small, the car will lurch or the gearbox might crunch. I assumed that left-foot braking was employed. It hadn't even occurred to me to heel-and-toe when downshifting without the clutch; why use just one foot when two are available? But Bell said he never brakes with his left foot, mostly because he's been braking with his right foot for more than 30 years, and it wouldn't be efficient to switch now. Theys concurred, adding that it's important to heel-and-toe for the sake of blip timing. "Once you're out of the pits, just plant your left foot on the dead pedal and keep it there," he said.
My turn to drive came near the end of that third and final day. No one ran through the gauges with me, because there was no time. A light drizzle had begun to fall, and real rain appeared to be moving in. They pretty much just dropped me in the car and said go.
"It's okay, just be gentle," said Theys. Gianpiero Moretti looked closely at me, narrowed his eyes sternly, and, as if I were driving off with his virgin daughter, said: "It is a sincere car. Be very, verygentle."
I climbed in the half-million-dollar machine, strapped on my helmet, looked up at the heavy gray clouds over the empty grandstands through the drops on my visor, and sighed. Then I fired up the wonderful screaming V l2 and pulled out.
It was immediately clear that right-foot braking definitely would be better. With a small footwell, plus three pedals and a dead pedal, there wasn't room for the left foot to do much dancing. And there was very little knee room under the small steering wheel, even though the car is flat-bottomed. Because your right foot is angled when braking, your right knee fits fairly well; your left foot wouldn't naturally be angled on the brake pedal since there's nothing the heel needs to do, so your left thigh would almost wedge under the steering wheel.
But everything else was comfortable; the seat fit like a carbon fiber glove, and there was enough arm room to the suede-wrapped Momo steering wheel. I couldn't ignore all the things that Bell, Theys and Gentilozzi had told me, but I tried not to dwell on them because they were mostly cautionary. Especially those things from Gentilozzi. "The thing that bites nine out of 10 people who drive this car, is that it's terrible on cold tires," he said. "The platform is so stiff, it'll spin right now.
"It starts to really accelerate at 9000 rpm, and it jumps from 10,000 to 12,000 so quick you literally can't stop it. So be ready to shift at 10,000.
"It's easy to downshift too soon, and there's a major flywheel effect, so watch you don't lock the tires and spin.
"Because it's a flat-bottom and will have a low-downforce Daytona setup, it will move around quite a bit on the banking. If you're too close to the wall, you can get wounded.
"It's definitely not a stab-and-steer car; if you do that, it'll go backwards. You've got to apply even amounts of throttle.
"It's the only car I've ever crashed when I was going in a straight line." Wheelspin while upshifting to fourth gear on the long straight at Paul Ricard had caught him by surprise, and put his butt around quicker than he could have ever imagined.
"But once you get past the shifting, the rest is pretty easy."
Actually, if I had been able to get past his dire warnings, the rest would have been pretty easy.
I knew I was only going to get about six laps, or less, if the rain picked up. So I was trying to balance the emotions that come with trying to beat the bell, and the attempt to be mature, wise and professional, which is to say bring the stunningly expensive car back unabused and intact, while still driving it quickly enough for the experience to be valid. Mostly, I was concerned (I won't say intimidated, although I probably should) that the car would break loose under acceleration on the damp banking. At one point I noticed heavier drops on my visor, and it was actually a relief, because a genuinely wet surface shows its hand, at least.
So the first two laps were to warm up the tires; the next two were to warm up me; the next two were to creep up on the speed; and the next two would have been.. . I wish my arithmetic had been better.
The sixth lap was a lot quicker than the first, but my impressions of the car didn't change with more speed. It's the most precise car I've ever driven; the cliche "go-kart handling" truly fits this one. This made hitting the apexes a snap; testing road cars on the track, I'm accustomed to swimming for apexes, and none of my own race cars ever handled like this, that’s for sure. When Bell took me around the track, he had said at almost every turn, "That's where you are on a good lap, if you can get there," and, while allowing for his perfectionism, it was still surprising to hear him say it was difficult to position the car in the same place every lap. Of course, he positions himself at the limit.
I've road raced as much on motorcycles as I have in cars, including last summer, and that made the Ferrari feel less foreign than it might have (my Ducati is also red and Italian). For one thing, I'm used to wind buffeting my helmet and blurring my vision. And I know what a sequential gearbox is supposed to feel like, although clutchless downshifting is another matter.
Bell had consoled me in advance by saying, "If you crunch the gearbox, you won't be the first. All of us have heard cracks and crunches." My upshifts were hitchless, but I did muff a few downshifts.
The steering was very heavy, especially on the banking where downforce loaded the front end (double-wishbone suspension there, too). I liked that; some modem racing cars, in particular touring cars, have power-assisted steering, which brings a breeziness to the guidance that makes them feel less like race cars. The Ferrari did none of the dancing that Gentilozzi predicted, maybe because I was 20 mph or more below racing speed as I feathered through Tum Four. As the oval flattened, I mashed the throttle soon enough to nick touch 180 on the front straight, still 10 mph down from a decent trap speed.
I think I braked for the first turn somewhere between the 200-and 100-yard signs, allowing room for a missed downshift from 5th to 2nd. Theys and Bell speed to within 70 yards of the turn before braking from 192 or 195. Yikes! The brakes are monumental Brembos; all four rotors are 14 inches in diameter and 1 3/8 inches thick, and use four-piston monoblock calipers. Of all the car's talents, this magnificent braking power is the one that dazzled Bell.
The exit of the first turn squiggles around to the right and back to the left, and is defined by guardrails ("I hate it, it's like a tunnel," said Bell); in the Ferrari, you upshift to third near the apex of the final squiggle.
Gentilozzi had told me that because the air intake was just behind the driver's helmet, the sucking noise would be louder than the exhaust note. He said it sounded like a groan, but all I heard was a scream. And I loved it. But it was startling, and caused me to short-shift. The engine simply sounded like it was time to shift at about 9500 rpm, and although I knew otherwise, my instinct was to not hurt it. I especially wish I could redo that one, because I blew the chance to hear and feel the engine at its peak on the banking. I should have forced my damn hand to stay off the shift lever until the light on the dash flashed at 10,700 rpm. A couple more laps and I would have gotten comfortable with the sound, but those laps weren't available.
I was getting into fourth before the East Horseshoe. Hitting the late apex in that turn is important because the exit drops off camber on the outside, and it's easy to get sucked over the side if you apex early. On the short straight that follows, even Theys short-shifts into fourth to be ready for the kink, which he takes flat-out. At that speed, you can't afford to miss the turn-in by more than a few inches.
The West Horseshoe is also taken in second, and it's an easy turn after you learn the line (aim for the restrooms). After another short straight on which you get into fourth, the final infield turn is a broad double apex, entered in second gear. Theys told me to short-shift to third in the turn, so the car isn't upset by a shift in the bumps on the banking. I did, but at my speed a short-shift was more like a dwarfshift; had I shifted to third at higher revs, it would have been past the bumps but facing the wall.
Around the relatively secure Turn Two, where the banking seems especially steep and thrilling, the steering wheel demanded a ton of effort. You're fairly close to the wall on the backstraight when you pounce on the brakes for the chicane, and after two quick downshifts you lean the car in. Data acquisition revealed that my speed was in the ballpark in the two infield horseshoes, but it was way off pace in the chicane, I guess because it was new to me. The chicane is long, flat and fast, appropriate to the vastness of Daytona.
You go high near the wall coming off the chicane, upshift to fourth before dropping down into Turn Three, then climb back up toward the wall as you approach Four. The wall should be about five feet away, said Theys, who upshifts into fifth at 10,800 rpm there. "The ground is going away from you, underneath of you, you are at the edge," he said. For me it was more like 10 feet and 9600 rpm, but I took advantage of the downhill drive toward the front straight. Your foot stays flat as your eyes try to focus, and soon they turn toward the 300-yard sign.
It all ended much too soon. Six laps was just enough to leave me longing for the time to get it half right. The car certainly makes an impression: a fantasy of what it must feel like racing it against other cars, with confidence, at your best. Jackson, Moretti and Theys are lucky men.
And so is Derek Bell. Based on his Daytona test in the 333SP, Moretti invited him to co-drive in the Momo Ferrari at Daytona. Bell spent Christmas at his farm in Sussex, England, and it was a very merry one. Even the world's greatest long-distance driver gets excited about the chance to drive such a car.
end
Sam Moses
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