Ferrari boss beaches California
2009-11-18 08:40
It’s virtually unimaginable for anybody but Luca di Montezemolo to head up Ferrari.
The Piemontese aristocrat – and former rally driver - is an Italian business institution. He even organized the 1990 soccer World Cup.
Simply put – di Montezemolo is the coolest guy in the car business and fits the billing as Ferrari boss flawlessly.
Over the weekend though, he did manage a gaffe of epic proportions.
California - beached?
Each year the final round of the Italian, European and North American series of the Ferrari Challenge Pirelli Trophy, and the Shell Ferrari Historic Challenge, are held as the Ferrari’s World Finals in Valencia.
Inadvertently, due to the event’s timing just as the F1 season finishes up, it's also where Ferrari usually introduces the F1 team’s new drivers for next season to its doting ownership club.
During this year’s Ferrari World Finals at Vencia, di Montezemolo managed to drive a brand new Ferrari California into a gravel trap during a parade lap.
Suffice to say, despite the best intentions of the Califonia’s limited-slip differential, he managed to get well and truly stuck.
Even the California's sophisticated track-biased traction controls systems were powerless in the face of this traction challenge...
Whether di Montezemolo’s off-road sojourn was a carefully orchestrated publicity stunt, to show Alonso and Massa’s ability to work together (they unsuccessfully tried to push the stricken California free), or simple brain fade, is debatable.
After waiting around, the stuck trio of Alonso, Massa and di Montezemolo were given a lift back to the pits in another California.
Why and how?
If di Montezemolo was driving the other fabled Italian supercar brand, which boasts an all-wheel drive system, he could have perhaps extracated himself...
It's noteworthy that di Montezemolo was not driving with sunglasses when the incident occurred. This is highly unusual for any Italian male, and could perhaps have been a contributing factor to his error of judgment...
