Motorsport

No sentiment as Super Aguri folds

Alan Henry — Mon, 12 May 2008 09:47:19 GMT

British F1 driver Anthony Davidson and his team-mate Takuma Sato were thrown out of work last week - along with around 70 people on the workforce payroll - after the Japanese former racer Aguri Suzuki's team crashed last week with debts believed to be in excess of £50m.

By the time the transporters and motorhomes wheeled into the paddock at Istanbul Park, the number of competing teams had been reduced to 10 - and with no real prospect of that number being increased in the immediately foreseeable future. Aguri Suzuki's bid to break into the F1 big-time had proved a game effort, but in truth he was pretty much out of his depth from the start. His team never lacked competence, but always lacked finance.

From the moment they struggled into life in 2006, using re-worked Arrows chassis, one of which had done duty as a show car at Milan airport, they were a day late and a dollar short.

Sato and Davidson generally drove pretty well. They never had the equipment to offer a challenge near the front of the field, but they struggled, my how they struggled. But in the end what killed their hopes and dreams was the F1 community's collective unwillingness to permit so-called customer cars from the start of 2009. It was the same set of circumstances which torpedoed Prodrive's plans to run what would effectively have been a McLaren-Mercedes 'B team' in 2009.

Interestingly, foremost amongst the objectors to customer cars has been Frank Williams. Yes, yes, don't tell me about it: back in 1977 Frank revived his F1 operation by fielding a March 761 on a shoestring budget and held together by hope. Bought from a bloke called Max Mosley, as I recall, who was then sales director for the Bicester-based race car constructors. And manufacturers of customer F1 cars.

Technorati Tags: sata,super aguri,alan henry,mosley,frank williams,customer f1 cars,suzuki,davidson

They're all safety cars now

Alan Henry — Tue, 06 May 2008 11:27:24 GMT

Without putting too fine a point on it, thirty years ago we would already have published Heikki Kovalainen's obituary had he been involved in the sort of accident which befell his McLaren-Mercedes MP4-23 in the recent Spanish GP. In fact, the car would most likely have exploded like a fire bomb and you'd have swept it all up into a black bin liner once the debris was cool enough to touch.

You may find the foregoing rather stark, some of you may go further than that and brand it as salacious. And perhaps you are right. But it is also totally true and the only reason Heikki has lived to fight another day is thanks to the remarkable efforts expended by the FIA and the F1 constructors to evolve safer cars and safer circuits. In particular, one must pay tribute to McLaren for whom Ron Dennis and John Barnard produced the first carbon-fibre chassis in the business back in 1981.

Just consider the detail of the Kovalainen shunt. It[the car] was destroyed, yes. The front of the chassis broke off. The chassis is wedge-shaped and the team concluded thataa it went in to the barriers until the point at which it snapped. A section of about 450-500mm broke off the front of the chassis, but everything worked as it was supposed to. The car absorbed a massive amount of energy, Heikki received no physical injuries and the circuit emergency staff and the FIA medical team at the track did an absolutely fantastic job in getting him out of the car safely and then looking after him thereafter.

Anybody who considers F1 to be a frivolous business should perhaps reflect on this reality.

Technorati Tags: barcelona,grand prix,kovalainen,spanish gp

Toivonen's legacy

John McIlroy — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:33:50 GMT

On this day, 22 years ago, world rallying lost its top driver of the time, and I lost my childhood hero. Henri Toivonen crashed on the Tour de Corse, his Lancia Delta S4 caught fire, and he and his co-driver Sergio Cresto were both killed. He was just 29 years of age; I was 12.

Toivonen, the son of Monte Carlo Rally winner Pauli, was a flawed genius. His spectacular driving style meant that he was often able to score victories in two-wheel-drive machinery, even in an era of Audi Quattros, but it also meant that he was prone to scrapes and incidents.

His character encouraged the latter, too. I remember him injuring himself during the Circuit of Ireland one year, not in the rally car but on a kart track he’d visited mid-event.

The S4 was the car that was supposed to bring him the titles he’d looked likely to claim after winning the RAC Rally in 1980. Henri, finally freed from the shackles of a Rothmans contract that had hampered him throughout much of the early 1980s, won the RAC again on the Delta’s debut in 1985, then started the fateful 1986 season with Monte Carlo Rally glory. He was leading the Tour de Corse – a tarmac event, not the natural surface for a Finn - by over two minutes when he crashed.

Just as F1 reinvented itself after the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger in 1994, so rallying went through a revamp following Toivonen’s accident. Group B cars like the Delta were banned from the end of 1986, prompting technical changes that eventually brought us to the World Rally Cars the sport uses today.

The speeds are higher now than they were in 1986, but the cars are safer; co-driver Michael Park’s death on the 2006 Rally GB was the first at WRC level since that fateful day in 1986.

But if the sport has moved on, why am I marking this day? Purely because this was the moment, 22 years ago, when I realised that heroes are not immortal.

M1 triggers Procar fantasies

James Ruppert — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:25:51 GMT

I became unusually excited at the appearance of BMW’s retro M1 Homage. It wasn’t the reassuringly sharkish demeanour, the iconic ‘M’ initial, or the fact - like the uber-cool original - it was named after our first motorway. No, one word popped into my head that hasn’t been mumbled since the early ‘80s: Procar.

This probably doesn’t mean much to younger readers, but to those of a certain age they are two of the most evocative syllables going, triggering memories of a golden age of mucking around on race tracks in fabulously costly supercars.

Determined to justify the development spend that had gone into creating the M1– a sort of Germano-Italian soap opera that had involved a dalliance with cash-strapped Lamborghini – BMW created the ultimate support series for the 1979 and 1980 Formula One seasons.

The ingredients were simple enough: identical M1s with a testosterone-fuelled mix of proper F1 racers and rich privateers behind their wheels. And as an aperitif to the main event it was utterly intoxicating, and really quite mad: three abreast into corners, massive offs and spectacular overtaking moves.

Hence today’s brilliant idea: let’s bring it back. Get BMW to knock up a couple of dozen of the M1 concept, invite the current F1 grid to prove they have some kind of personality beneath the logo-clad overalls and let’s find out who’s the real deal. I reckon that new, improved version should even allow incompetent motoring hacks like myself to take part for maximum ‘mobile chicane’ potential.

Can you imagine the sound of splintered glassfibre as Kimi and Lewis pile into a slow corner side-by-side? Or the chaos that could be caused by a desperate-to-impress Kazuki Nakijima trying to put a lap on Jay Kay in the wet at Spa?

My only other proviso – and this is essential to the success of the whole venture – is that all the drivers will be compelled to have 1970s haircuts and to wear overalls embroidered with slogans along the lines of James Hunt’s infamous “Sex: the breakfast of champions.”

I’d watch it – wouldn’t you?

Alonso out on a limb

Alan Henry — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:59:52 GMT

You never say 'never' in a business as capriciously unpredictable as Formula 1, but Fernando Alonso must surely be wondering whether he is ever going to win another Grand Prix after the door of future opportunity at Ferrari was slammed firmly in his face last week by Luca di Montezemolo.

Certainly, as he goes into his home race at Barcelona this coming Sunday, it's difficult to see how he can expect to finish any better than seventh - assuming Ferrari, McLaren and BMW Sauber get both their cars to the chequered flag.

The conventional wisdom in the F1 pits and paddock had been that Alonso was parked up at Renault as a convenient interim berth between McLaren - with whom he fell out last year - and the Prancing Horse, which everybody blithely assumed would kick Felipe Massa out of the door to make way for the Prince of the Asturias.

That theory has now been shot down in flames. "To line up a Raikkonen-Alonso double act would mean wanting to damage yourself. I want two equal drivers that work together," the Ferrari president told Gazzetta dello Sport.

Nobody underestimates Renault's technical competence as potential race winners, but they are struggling with their R28 challenger at the present moment. I'm not sure whether they are being helped or hindered by having Alonso on the team strength at the present moment. Certainly, the glory days of the 2005 and 06 world championships must seem like distant memories from another solar system for the hard-working lads from Enstone.

F1 finally goes smoke free

John McIlroy — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:35:29 GMT

Wheeze. Puff. So at last F1 is rid of loverly fags. Ferrari – the last remaining team with tobacco sponsorship in the pinnacle of motorsport – will run a ‘barcode’ livery instead of Marlboro stickers, even where the country hosting the race would allow the full-tar design.

Personally, I’m glad. A few years ago I ended up on a Radio 5 phone-in where one of the panel asked me to defend F1 not from a position of spectacle or entertainment, butfrom the fact that it glamorised tobacco in developing countries. Vaguely disgusted with the situation myself, I pretty much agreed with him, bringing the ‘discussion’ to a embarrassingly quick conclusion.

A grid full of cars burning unleaded and avgas is far enough down the scale of social acceptability, I reckon, without throwing death sticks into the equation.

And yet I do have a tinge of regret, because booze and ciggies have given us some of the most fever liveries in F1, and motorsport in general. I’m old enough to remember Nigel Mansell crashing out of the Monaco GP lead in a sexy, black JPS Lotus. Or the simple beauty of John Watson’s red-and-white McLaren as he won the British GP at Silverstone in 1981. And in my book, a Lancia rally car simply didn’t count unless it had Martini Racing stripes.

There’s a reason for this, of course. Twenty years ago a single firm like Martini, JPS or Marlboro could bring enough cash to the table to buy every square inch of available advertising space. In the case of British American Tobacco, they went on to own the team itself. But now the global economy means that traditional money sources have been replaced by emerging industries: computing, mobile phone networks and e-tailers.

Will F1 ever look the same again? I doubt it. But I think that’s as much down to piecemeal sponsorship deals creating scattergun liveries than the fact that the products featured won’t harm your health.

Cheers. Cough.

Mosley Support Association?

Alan Henry — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:04:34 GMT

Damon Hill's gently restrained and dignified call on FIA president Max Mosley to consider his position and oblige the motor racing community by resigning as quickly as possible stood last week in dramatic contrast to the MSA's mimsing, fence-sitting unwillingness to say anything critical about the most powerful man in motorsport politics.

I can only assume that Britain's national sporting authority has opted for the middle route simply because they are worried that, in the event of Mosley getting a vote of confidence at the FIA general assembly meeting on June 3, it will be pay-back time to the detriment of those clubs who have taken a robust stance against the beleaguered president.

Don't get me wrong here. I am not saying that Mosley is a vindictive individual who never forgets those who have plotted against him. But what I am saying is that, beneath that urbane gloss, Mosley is one tough and uncompromising operator who knows the rules of the game and the reality that, in a battle for survival, you sometimes find yourself rolling around the gutter in a bare-knuckle fight. A couple of times I have been on the wrong side of Max and you can take it from me, it's no laughing matter.

I'll leave you with one question. In the event of the general assembly giving him a vote of confidence, is that not just a little too close to home to represent a valid endorsement of his suitability to continue?

That, in my mind, is the real question at issue.

Ralf fails to find his level

John McIlroy — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:04:39 GMT

The racing career of the ‘other’ Schumacher entered a new phase yesterday – and sad to report that Ralf proved his form over the last three years with the Toyota F1 team was no fluke, qualifying a lowly 14^th on his debut in the DTM German touring car series.

Yes, multi-millionaire Ralf is lending the DTM a bit of glamour this year; well, it needs it, considering that fellow F1 refugees Mika Hakkinen and Jean Alesi have now moved on from the Merc/Audi tintop series. But as Audi locked out the podium at the season-opener at Hockenheim, Ralf – in a year-old car, let us not forget – finished 50 seconds off winner Mattias Ekstrom, just behind 13th-placed Paul di Resta. And not that far ahead of Susie Stoddart, or Mathias Lauda.

If anything, though, the result poses a bigger problem for young Lauda than it does for Schumacher. Only a few weeks ago his father Niki (yes, that one) went on the record, saying, “I’ve told Mathias that if he comes home and tells me he has been beaten by Ralf then he won’t be able to use the Lauda name any more.”

Look out for Mathias X on the DTM timesheets from now on, then…

Driving a BTCC Vectra

Matt Prior — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:57:15 GMT

Somebody was criminally negligent enough the other week to let me have a go in a touring car, which you can watch here. As you might expect, it was just about the best working day of my life to date, but what surprised me most was how easy the BTCC Vectra was to drive fast.

On a spot of reflection, I'm beginning to wonder if this is because of the FIA's Super 2000 Regulations. These seemed eminently sensible to me: a set of loose regs dictating what you can and can't do to a road car to make it go racing, or rallying.

I remember reading a feature a few years ago where a journalist was allowed to drive a Renault Laguna touring car. Don't let it rev below 3000rpm or it'll break, he was told. Don't do this, don't touch that, be careful of the other. Because it'll break.

None of that wtih the Vectra, which starts on a key and, with no throttle, settles to an idle. Okay, it's grumbly, but by racing standards, is very tractable. The engine's location and most of the components within it are regulated; the injection system has to be the one from the road car. Besides, there's an 8500rpm rev limit - a Honda S2000's is higher - so there's just no point - almost no way - of developing a massively peaky engine. The suspension has to derive from the road car's, too.

This is all meant to reduce racing costs, level the field and attract more manufacturers to the sport, with cars at a price that privateers can afford, too. And theoretically, a manufacturer's basis for a Super2000 car could be easily tweaked to go touring car racing, or rallying.

Largely I think it's been successful but, typically, not wholly. 'Ah, don't pay too much attention to those regs,' said our chief sub John McIlroy, who's forgotten more about motorsport than most will ever know. 'They might change again soon anyway.'

Seems that some engineers don't like Super 2000 regulations because they end up spending loads of time and money trying to fathom the loose regulations, then try and make a set-up that wasn't built to go racing in the first place, go racing. Some would rather have a set of tighter regulations, designed with specific racing components in mind, so they can get on with building something that goes fast, and lasts, without compromise. These loose regs reward those with more cash.

But isn't that always the way: those who can, spend, those who can't, don't. Leave a set of regulations alone for ten years, I say; that way everybody understands them and exploits them as well as each other, so a privateer with a two year-old car will be that much closer to a manufacturer-backed front runner, and all the cars are on a similar pace, which is what we want, right? A return to Cleland vs Hoy vs Soper vs the car on its roof is a Toyota?

Cilck here to watch the video.

Robert Kubica: F1's rising star

Alan Henry — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:50:22 GMT

I've always been impressed by the way Lewis Hamilton rates Robert Kubica as one of the very best drivers he has to compete against.

Furthermore, the look of sheer pleasure on Bernie Ecclestone's face as he congratulated the young Pole for taking pole in Bahrain at least allowed the sport's commercial rights' holder a few moments' respite from worrying about the damage Max Mosley's extra-curricular activities have inflicted on the sport these last couple of weeks.

OK, so Robert's BMW Sauber was running the opening stint of the Sakhir race with less fuel aboard than the Ferraris and McLarens which surrounded him on the starting grid. But it was still a very creditable effort – and although the BMW stopped three laps before Raikkonen and four laps before Massa, he was hardly qualifying on vapour.

Ron Dennis, the McLaren chairman, doubts that BMW can sustain the front running pace, but Ferrari sporting director Stefano Domenicali thinks otherwise.

"Kubica did a very nice, positive race," said Domenicali. "The pace he and BMW have deserves respect. He is a driver who I believe will be in the title fight until the end."

Hamilton, who had one of his worst F1 weekends at the Sakhir desert circuit, will be sparing no effort to ensure he is too.

Mosley: the clock is ticking

Matt Prior — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:00:52 GMT

From the point of view of Formula One, I couldn’t care less what Max Mosley gets up to in the privacy of his own bedroom – or which historical costume his multiple partners choose to dress up in.

Indeed, aside from some laughs in the paddock, and the stagnation of Mosley’s Air Miles account over the next few months, the allegations of what the British tabloid media delights in calling a romp will make no difference to the prosperity of the world’s leading motorsport.

None of this alters the fact that Mosley needs to step down from the leadership of the FIA immediately. In fact I’m astonished that a) Max still thinks his position as FIA President is tenable and b) that most people seem to have absolutely no idea what the FIA does beyond fining Ron Dennis a few million quid.

I have in front of me the 2007 Review of the FIA Foundation: it’s the bit of the FIA responsible for ‘the Automobile and Society’. It helps administrate EuroNCAP, it runs and supports road safety and greenness campaigns like Make Roads Safe and ChooseESC, and it successfully petitioned the UN for the creation of a Global Road Safety Week. The FIA, then, represents every single one of us.

It has some campaigning heavyweights on its side, too. Pictured in the 2007 Review supporting its programmes are Tony Blair, Barcelona striker Samuel Eto’o, Michael Schumacher, the prime ministers of Peru, Jamaica and Japan, HRH Prince Michael of Kent, the European commissioner Viviane Reding, German chancellor Angela Merkel, and the Emeritus Archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu. Mosley is pictured – not in a News of the World pose, I needn’t add – with many of them.

Now, I think it’s fair to say that some of these, if not all, take a dim view of romps with hookers, however high-class. Imagine, if you will, asking some of those FIA-supporting luminaries to pop outside for a photo-op with Mosley tomorrow, or next week, or next year, or asking them to sign-up to the latest campaign.

However noble the FIA’s cause – and many of them are – I think there’d be the odd double-take; perhaps even the odd refusal. Mosley’s continued involvement with the FIA might not lastingly damage the world of fast cars going round in small circles, but it will certainly do the FIA’s other work no favours. And it’s here, rather than in F1, where I can’t see how he can continue.

I’m sorry Max, but I'm afraid it’s over. I’ll put the kettle on.

Jim Clark - 40 years on

Mike Duff — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:31:30 GMT

It was exactly 40 years ago today that Britain lost the man who, to me and countless others, will always be the greatest racing driver of them all.

On the face of it, that’s a preposterous statement for me to make. Clark died seven years before I was born and precious little archive footage of him racing survives. Pretty much everything I knew about him is based on books, photographs and the good fortune to have spoken over the years to various people who knew him.

As a kid, with no knowledge of 1960s grand prix racing, my dad used to drive us between various relatives in the Scottish borders through the area that Clark grew up in – the town of Duns, which has posthumously adopted him as its most famous son, and the village of Chirnside which was actually closest to his family’s farm at Edington Mains.

Hearing about Clark, and seeing some of his trophies in the small museum in Duns, triggered my interest in a driver who was the antithesis of the sponsor-clad automatons of modern racing. This was a man who could make any car fast and who raced in numerous different disciplines. He took pole in over a third of the grands prix he started, won 25 of them (despite the shaky reliability of the Lotus cars he raced), took two drivers’ championships and won the Indy 500. On top of that he raced touring cars and other minor formula and was well on his way to a top-three finish in the 1966 RAC Rally when he crashed out.

He died in what can’t seem like anything other than a pointless crash, leaving the barrier-free track at Hockenheim in a Formula 2 race after what was most likely a rear tyre failure. He was killed just four days after Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated; two icons of the era, dead within a week.

Clark was a modest man, and that’s how he’s remembered, without towering memorials or eternal flames. His grave in the Chirnside kirkyard is no bigger than those that surround it, its legend of “Pembroke Bermuda” testament to the tax problems that plagued the later part of his career. The village’s memorial clock, complete with a wireframe Lotus 49, is so understated that casual visitors are unlikely to even notice it.

But that’s no reason not to make the pilgrimage, and to experience some of the local roads on which Clark’s supreme talents were formed. Four decades on, his legend is undimmed.

Mosley: how long can he remain boss of the FIA?

Alan Henry — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:41:47 GMT

Don't make a habit of reading the News of the World, but must say I had to check that it wasn't 1 April when I saw its coverage yesterday of a man, which the newspaper purports was FIA president Max Mosley, in what might best be described as a bewildering pose.

It will, I suspect, be down to some very expensive lawyers to fight Mr Mosley's corner for whatever vindication he seeks, but putting aside the charitable observation that it looks like one deeply troubled guy, the question the motor racing community is now asking is 'How long can he survive as the boss of international motor sport?"

In the real world, a politician who was caught doing the Hitler hokey-cokey would, within minutes, be 'spending more time with his family' but F1 has unfortunately all-too-often shown that it has an arrogant and self-absorbed streak which, given time, can justify just about anything.

Mosley, the consummate politician, knows that very well. He knows that if he adopts his steely gaze, deploys his self-deprecatory sense of humour - which he's used on many previous occasions to get himself and the FIA off the hook - then there's a fair chance he will weather the storm. Even so, Max's finely tuned antennae will probably have judged that, sooner or later, he will have to stand down.

His dilemma reminds me of that facing the captain of the Titanic on being confronted by the designer with the news that the bottom had been ripped out of his super-liner by an iceberg. "But it can't sink," said the captain in horror. "Well, it certainly can't float," replied the designer pragmatically.

Neither can Mr Mosley.

Why does Toyota stay in F1?

Peter Nunn — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:15:39 GMT

So is 2008 going to be the year when Toyota finally gets to justify the hundreds of millions it’s invested in Formula One?

Jarno Trulli’s strong run to fourth place in Malaysia certainly suggests the team is on course for a better season than last year. It even offset the F1 outfit’s disappointing start to the season in Melburne, where Trulli retired and new boy Nico Glock suffered a spectacular end-over-end shunt.

But in Japan – and within Toyota – there seems to be an increasingly prevalent belief that 2008 really is the make-or-break season. Because despite having one of the biggest budgets in the paddock, Toyota’s eight years in Formula One have so far produced the dizzying total of two pole positions, no wins and just 159 points from 106 races.

I recently attended the company’s motorsports conference in Tokyo, where the top brass again expressed confidence for the year ahead. “I strongly hope that that one of our drivers will stand on the top step of the podium this year,” said boss Katsuaki Watanabe. Although his rueful admission that “you probably remember me saying the same thing last year” got a laugh from the audience.

The big question remains that of whether Toyota would really walk away from Formula One if the results don’t arrive. Some people clearly reckon that a clean break is the best approach for the brand, but there’s another long-standing rumour that Toyota just wants one win in F1 before it feels it can walk away, honour intact.

Of course, others still believe that Toyota will persevere, both to use F1’s potential to communicate its brand values (even from the middle of the table) – and also because it can. As the world’s biggest and most profitable car-maker, the firm could afford to continue in motorsport’s highest series indefinitely, despite the losses. But whether Toyota's management culture really fits in with the fast-moving, pirhana club world of F1 is something else again.

But there’s also a growing view that Toyota’s long-term future in the sport might be as an engine supplier. Indeed, the Toyota-powered Williams team is already residing two places higher in the constructors’ championship.

But would such a subsidiary role be compatible with Toyota’s corporate pride? That’s another matter.

Alonso already considering his options

Alan Henry — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:40:13 GMT

I cannot be sure, but I get the impression that, with only two of the season's 18 F1 world championship qualifying rounds already run, double world champion Fernando Alonso is concluding that getting himself chucked out of the McLaren squad in favour of a return to Renault might not have been the brightest juggling act to have pulled.

While Lewis Hamilton emerged from Sunday's Malaysian grand prix still leading the world championship despite a botched pit stop which dropped him to fifth place, his former team-mate Alonso has virtually conceded that he has no prospect of getting on terms with his old adversary.

Alonso, who won the 2005 and ‘06 titles driving for Renault, had pinned his hopes on a return to the French Formula One squad after falling out with the McLaren management in the middle of last season and leaving after serving just a single year of his contract.

However it now appears that even scoring points will be a tall order for the Spanish driver who finished the physically gruelling race at Sepang in eighth place, over a minute behind Kimi Raikkonen's winning Ferrari and 25sec adrift of Hamilton's fifth place McLaren. "It was more or less as we expected," the Spaniard was quoted as saying by AS newspaper.

When Alonso rejoined Renault there was much speculation that he asked for a one year contract in order to be available at the end of 2008 to explore the possibility of driving for Ferrari alongside Kimi Raikkonen in the event of Felipe Massa being dropped from the Maranello line-up.

However it is understood that Flavio Briatore, the flamboyant Renault team principal, was not interested in a one year deal and eventually secured a two-year contract but with break clauses in Alonso's favour if certain performance criteria are not achieved.

Alonso has brushed aside speculation linking him again to the Ferrari team, saying it was to be expected following Massa's difficult start to the season. In any event, making room for Alonso at Ferrari would involve complex negotiations to buy out Massa's current deal which extends until 2010.

It seems to me that Alonso has screwed this up in a right royal fashion. What's the one thing more difficult than trying to take on Lewis in equal McLarens? You've got it: trying to take on Kimi in equal Ferraris!