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26.6.07
The weekend of 8th-10th June saw a celebration of the joint anniversaries of 60 years for the Ferrari marque and 40 years for the Ferrari Owners’ Club of Great Britain (the oldest in the world) at the Silverstone circuit with over a thousand Ferraris present over the three days. The majority of the Ferraris present were parked in an exclusive area in the track centre, marshaled into inch-perfect position by members of the Prancing Horse Register. With each Tipo given its own parking zone it was interesting to compare the numbers of each present with the 348 seemingly the most plentiful and the 308GT4 in the minority. Beside the Ferrari parking zone, the Owners’ Club marquee served everything from a bacon sandwich to a pint of Fosters and provided the focal point for the weekend, a place to meet friends and the venue for a formal BBQ on the Saturday evening. Outside the Owner’s Club had laid on an impressive display of rare and beautiful tipos including 250 GTO, SWB and California Spider although the highlight for many seemed to be the arrival of recording artiste Jay Kay in his black Enzo.
Racing out on the circuit on both Saturday and Sunday included rounds of the European ‘Trofeo’ and ‘Coppa’ Championships for the newer 430 Tipos - both ‘Trofeo’ races being won in commanding style by Ayrton Senna’s nephew Bruno Senna who had been lent a 430 for the weekend and is tipped for Formula One next season. The Ferrari Historic Challenge cars were split into their usual three groups, with both races for single seaters dominated by Maserati 4CMs and for the older Sports Racing Cars both dominated by Maserati 250S cars. Honour was restored for the Ferrari marque on this, their weekend, in both races for the later Sports Racing and GT cars with two victories by the 312P (basically a knee-high two seater Grand Prix car with enclosed bodywork), followed home by a 412P, P4, 512BBLM, the incredible be-winged North American Racing Team 308GT4 and the Ecurie Francorchamps 250LM. It was a great pity that such a fantastic collection of cars were all crammed into two pit garages where it was almost impossible to see them – akin to putting the Mona Lisa in a storeroom with the door left slightly ajar. These famous and beautiful cars should have been on full display. There were also two sessions on each day for both the Enzo derived FXX cars and the ex-Formula One cars from ‘Corse Clienti’, although as these were demonstrations rather than races they were both rather boring to watch. For most the highlight of the weekend was the attempt on Saturday evening to set a new Guinness World Record for the ‘Largest Parade of Ferraris’ when a total of 385 cars took to the circuit, forming a line two abreast, a mile and a half long to set a new record almost three times greater than the existing record. Whilst the weekend was jointly organised by Ferrari UK and the Ferrari Owners’ Club, it has to be said that without the efforts of Peter Everingham and the Owners’ Club, the event would have been less than perfect. All of the display cars were provided by the Owners’ Club, both the Record Attempt and demonstration of forty four F40s was organized by the Club, and the huge majority of Ferraris present at the event and which formed their own display were provided by Club Members. In view of this enormous contribution by the Owners’ Club it
seemed rather ungracious that the Club’s two ‘formula
classic’ races should have been slotted in at 8.45 on Sunday
morning before most people had got out of bed and at 6.00 on Sunday
evening by which time they had left for home to watch the Canadian Grand
Prix. Furthermore, both races were far more interesting and eventful
than either the FXX or Corse Clienti demonstrations and were only let
down by the uninformed and somewhat patronizing commentary by Silverstone’s
resident commentators.
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