The Ultimate Ferrari Festival
Ferrari Racing Days speeds to Sydney this weekend, complete with Formula 1 races, rare cars and even a two-year-old taking to the race track.
Starting today, Sydney becomes home to the first, fun-filled and loud Ferrari Racing Days – a weekend-long festival embracing the largest ever assembly of Ferraris in Australia.
From 11 to 13 April, the Sydney Motorsport Park will be filled with the sounds of roaring, racing Ferraris and the cheers of fervent spectators. The event includes the second leg of the Ferrari Asia Pacific Challenge Series, in which drivers race in cars based on the famed Ferrari 430 design. (The first leg of the series was held in Sepang, Malaysia in February.) In “hot laps”, meanwhile, drivers take paying passengers around the race track in Formula 1 cars, while kids can take their own turn at the wheel in a children’s zone featuring miniature electric self-drive Ferraris and simulators.
For Ferrari fanatics, more than 300 Ferraris are on display. One replica showroom houses classic and talked-about models, including the 166MM, an extremely rare car from 1953. The car’s owner will be onsite over the weekend, chatting to enthusiasts about his “baby”.
Another exhibition features the brand’s most luxurious models, including the uber-expensive GTO (a 1963 model sold for A$55 million in October 2013, making it the world’s most expensive car) and the famed Enzo, a car built in 2002 with Formula 1 technology and named for the company's founder, Enzo Anselmo Ferrari. You’ll also find Ferrari’s A$2 million hybrid supercar, LaFerrari. The slick, vivid red vehicle is said to be Ferrari’s most ambitious handiwork, designed to increase aerodynamic efficiency. “This is the first and quite possibly the only time we will see a LaFerrari in Australia,” said Ferrari Australasia president and CEO Herbert Appleroth.
The official motorist of the event, Spanish racer Marc Gené, will be driving in the official Ferrari Formula One Pit Stop, a showcase demonstrating just how quickly professionals can change a car’s tyres and petrol. However, the need for speed doesn’t only apply to skilled adults this weekend – a toddler devotee, two-year-old Piero Pascazio, was personally invited by Ferrari to exhibit his go-karting skills. Gold Coast-based Pascazio is being touted by his father, a self-confessed Ferrari fanatic, as the world’s youngest racing driver.
