Day 3 – Frankfurt to Maranello

Early start today, got out the hotel around 8 as we had 550 miles to get to Maranello, second day on the awesomebahn too. Although the awesomebahn is,well, awesome you really do need to take a lot of care on it, you are required to look so far ahead and to anticipate every stupid move someone could take.

We managed a healthy 165Mph today(GPS verified, speedo showed over 170) and the car was still pulling like a train, but had to slow for traffic, lucky I started to slow when I did, I managed to break just in time to not mount a yellow skoda estate.

After leaving Germany the driving became, well, standard motorway driving, nothing much to write about really.

We arrived in Maranello at around 4, checked into the hotel, parked in the secure underground car park and scraped the underside of the front bumper again as it was a bit steep, arse!. I was a bit pissed off at myself for doing it, I could have been more careful but it was already pretty bad under there anyway, it’s been scraped on so many speed bumps that it’s hardly worth worrying about it anymore. If I get it fixed all I’ll end up doing is worrying about scratching it again which is an almost 100% certainty, it’s pretty low at the front.


View from our hotel balcony, the building on the left is where the Formula1 cars are made, Fiorano test track behind that

We then went to check out the Ferrari store, they’re all over the world but there’s nothing like being in the one across from the factory gates, I had to make a few purchases, 2 new keyrings, a small F430 model and a couple of T-Shirts.

After that we thought we’d take a wee drive round Maranello, it’s a lovely little place, very Italian(obviously) the whole place lives Ferrari, there’s a cavalino on every store, every restaraunt and there’s quite a few on this big factory right in the middle of town :)

It’s an awesome place to be, you can just feel the history, the legends that have walked through those factory gates, the cars that have driven out and let’s not forget that one day back in 2006 mine would have been driven out of those gates for the first time and had a blast into the hills with one of the test drivers, I’m sure it’s nice for him to be back at his birthplace for a few days :)


Outside the historic entrance

We stopped and had a nice pizza, had another drive around the other side of the factory where the new main gate and wind tunnel is located(on the way saw a new 458 Itialia and 599 GTO parked in the grounds) and we had a drive up into those hills, although I’m pretty sure the last time my car was on those roads he would have been driven a bit harder than I did.

Tomorrow is a bit of a rest day, we have nothing planned, the Factory tour isn’t until Tuesday morning so I think I’ll just hang out around the main gates see if I see any of the new stuff going out for test drives, might even follow some of the test drivers if I get a chance and just see exactly what they get up to with peoples new cars.

Oh yeah, typical, just watched on the news that in the UK they had the hottest day of the year so far, always the same when I’m away, oh well that’s all for today.

Ciao(that’s Italian by the way)