October 25th 2008, Prestwold Hall, Leicestershire
On what was a very cold day we headed off to Prestwold Hall in Leicester as Kev was doing a "Ferrari Frenzy" day.
Run by Everyman Racing and bought by Mum and Dad Roper as a birthday present, the day was made up of a safety briefing, a few demonstration laps of the track before you get your hands on a Ferrari.
Safety Briefing
The compulsory safety briefing told you what to expect, how the day is run, that it is possible to crash and how much it could cost you to repair the Ferrari if you didn’t take out the extra insurance.
They kindly showed a photo of what the car looked like after some bloke went off once. It cost £40,000 to put it back together!
Demonstration Laps
With Kev being a former racing driver (3rd in the 2006 Westfield Sports Car Club Speed Series don’t you know) with confidence in his driving skills, and resisting the urge to take out the extra insurance, it was off for a few laps of the 1.8 mile long course being driven round by an Instructor in a BMW Alpina D3
The Instructor pointed out that corner 3 was the hardest and that’s where most people go off heading straight towards the trees.
The Ferrari
With Kev now sporting a Crash Helmet and waiting for a Ferrari to return, the one that did was a 550 Maranello.
Its 5.5 litre V12 engine produces 485bhp, enough to get it to 60mph in 4.2 seconds and keep going to 199mph. It also had a flappy paddle gear box, right for up, left for down, both together for neutral.
The 200 year old instructor sat in the passenger seat kept giving advice on when to brake, turn, accelerate so all in all it was pretty easy to get round the track even if that mean having to overtake some of the other cars going round.
Each Lap the instructor encouraged you to go faster and faster so it was rude not to listen and amazingly the faster you went the better the car felt.
The last lap was the best. Having caught an Audi R8 that in turn had caught a Mini Cooper at the last corner chicane the instructor said it was safe to overtake them so we did, both of them at the same time, before heading down the straight arriving at the next corner at 145mph.
But sadly just as you get used to it, its time to stop and let someone else have a go. Having collected some photos and a certificate saying Kev had completed the day, it was off home to find out if a Ferrari 550 Maranello is a practical alternative to a diesel saloon car….