FERRARI FESTIVAL - BRANDS HATCH - 21, 22 July 2001

 Text & Pictures: Martin Wollny
Just when we thought that the best of the extraordinary line-up of motoring events this year was left behind - there came the Ferrari Festival at Brands Hatch. Another pretentious club gathering, I hear someone saying? How wrong, and this comes from someone whose jaws do not drop at the mention of the name Ferrari!!! This was, by far, the most enjoyable racing meeting I've seen this year! OK, the circuit is nice and journalist-friendly, the weather was just right and the cars too good to look at, let alone race, but, in my opinion, the most interesting aspect of this weekend was the deliberate effort on the part of the competitors to play down the money side of the legend and instead glorify the founding element of the marque's philosophy - racing!

That was the idea, but I still couldn't help counting millions as different flavours of 250s, Monzas, 166s were passing by on their way to the pits. There I was standing, attacked from all sides by the vibrant and powerful music played by elaborately manufactured exhausts and cursing myself for not having a tape recorder to record the sounds.

 

 

I hurried into the pits myself and there I was, trying hard to avoid being run over by some enthusiastic Europeans both in powerful cars and those riding feeble mopeds, somehow appearing to go faster than their low "cc" count and laws of physics could possibly allow them. The officials seemed to be quite busy marshalling these unofficial paddock two-wheeler races but little of their lecturing ever found listening ears.