When we last left off, Helen and I were finishing breakfast and heading for the FCA 2008 Meet track events at Mosport. I’ve never been there, but have known about the track since I was a little kid. It used to host the Canadian Grand Prix until it moved to Montreal 30 years ago.
Our drive from Niagara Falls to Toronto was pretty uneventful. We had the roof down, and drove through fog. We contributed smiles and waves to numerous point and shoot and phone camera owners photo collections along the way. You know, you really have to be careful what you do when driving in a 360 with the roof down. It’s as private as the grounds around 10 Downing Street.
We had some excitement as we passed through Toronto. It was intermittently foggy along the way, but as we got to Pickering, it started raining. So I had to move us from leftmost lane to rightmost lane to reach the safe shoulder. We accomplished that, and God bless the guys in Maranello for building this fully automatic and fast roof deployment system. Up it went, left turn signal, shoulder and mirror check, then press left foot hard and go through the gears. No worries there!
Since neither of us had been to Mosport, we programmed it into our TomTom GPS. But, the damn thing took us to an exact point in a farmers field that was most definitely NOT a world renowned track. Crap. So, back to Bowmanville we went, as Helen consulted the printed directions the folks hosting the event gave us. We now knew where we were going. I made a couple of passes, because I absolutely HAD to make it to the track by 12pm to do my laps. On my last pass, I caught up to what I saw in the distance was a black Ferrari. As I closed in on it, to my delight, I saw that it was the Texas F430 Scuderia! Thank you TomTom for screwing up and putting me in this spectacular spot. We followed her into Mosport, and parked with a stable of other beauties.
We met up with some new friends and some folks I know from the Toronto area as we strolled through the venue. Ferrari of Ontario had a huge display (including Remo’s F430 Scuderia and Schumachers F1 car). I picked up a couple event shirts, and then we got ready for our laps. It was $50/person and all for charity. At 12:10 we were heading off, so me, not wanting to be late, had Sophia warmed up and moving towards the starting area at 12:00. My eagerness paid off, because we were right behind the escort car, driven by one of the many instructors. It was a beautiful yellow 599.
After a few pix, we were off. Now nobody gave me a “do’s and don’ts” document, and it was up to my common sense and conscience to figure out what was appropriate. But put me in a Ferrari on a spectacular track, and somehow my frame of reference shifts. Luckily, riding in the right seat was the other half of my conscience!
Mosport is really a fun track, and I can see how challenging it would be when driven “in anger”. Our leader was letting us have “reasonable” fun, but we were not going to see 100+ MPH today. But that was fun enough. Taking corners at 70MPH and feeling understeer was more than satisfying enough. I decided well before we started the engine that I was leaving the traction control engaged. Spinning the car and likely damaging it was not going to be something I wanted to happen.
So we did 3 laps in total, one “out lap”, one “hot lap” and one “in lap”. It was all great fun, and Helen took some great pix during our drive.
Well, that’s it for now. We’re back at the hotel in Toronto (after another rain-induced fast lane-change-pitstop-roof-raise. It’s the awards dinner gala tonight, then up early and home tomorrow. We’re driving the kids to Washington DC on Monday morning!
mJm
Just thinking...by Mark J. McArdle 