From the Curator's Office: Racing a Ferrari

I'm a major fan of the British automotive TV show "Top Gear." Although the long running show is no longer in production (and the stars, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May are moving onto a project for Amazon.com) I've been fascinated with the supercars the trio tested out on their racetrack and when the opportunity came along for me to do something similar, I took it.

My opportunity came through Groupon a few months ago. An ad popped up in my email for "Xtreme Xperience" which promised "Real Supercars, Real Racetracks, Real Instruction." I'd seen other ads for driving supercars, but these seemed to be limited to a crawling around a parking lot. Not exactly "Top Gear" stuff. The "Xtreme Xperince," however, guaranteed something a little more along the lines of what I had seen on TV.

Browsing through their website I checked out the cars available to drive: A Lamborghini Huracán, Audi R8 V10, Lamborghini LP560-4, Nissan GT-R, Porsche 911 GT3, and a Ferrari 458 Italia. I was always a big fan of Lambos, however looking at the specs on the Huracán I saw there was a warning that the maximum height for a driver was six-foot two inches. Since I'm closer to six-foot four, this was a problem.

In fact, it turns out that no Lamborghini is friendly to tall drivers (you have to wonder how Jeremy Clarkson, who is six foot-five inches, manages to do road tests). Going through the car specs I saw that the Ferrari Italia, however, could take drivers up to six foot three.

The Ferrari 458 Italia

Well, if you can't drive a Lambo, a Ferrari would certainly be the next best choice. With a 562 H.P. engine it wasn't as powerful as the 602 H.P. Hurrian, but top speeds of the two vehicles were precisely the same at 202 miles per hour. The 0 to 60 times were similar too, with the Huracán clocking in at 3.2 seconds and the Ferrari at just a tenth of a second longer.

The cost of a "Xtreme Xperience" varies depending on the car you choose. The cheapest car was the Nissan GT-R at $219 for a standard three lap experience, while the most expensive was the Lamborghini Huracán at $329. This reflects the value of the vehicles with the Nissan only worth $105,000 and the Lambo listing at $295,000. For the three laps in the Ferrari the cost was $299. With my Groupon discount, however, it cost $209, so I decided to take the plunge and signed up. Through the website you could reserve a time and location. I decided on 3PM on a Sunday a few weeks in the future at Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey.

There are a lot of things you can purchase to go with the experience. The most obvious is a video recording of your drive. If you choose this $30 option, cameras inside the car record your time on the track with both a view of you driving and an angle from between the seats facing the windshield. I didn't purchase this, because I didn't think my driving skills were good enough to be memorialized, but I can see it would be a popular keepsake to the event.

There is a required additional cost, however. To drive the cars you must also purchase track insurance (Your regular auto insurance will not cover driving a quarter million dollar car on a racetrack). Xtreme Xperience offered three different insurance packages ranging from $39 to $129 which gave coverage from $50,000 to $200,000. Since some of the cars are worth as much as $295,000, you could find yourself stuck with quite a bill no matter what insurance package you purchased if you managed to total your supercar.

After watching how carefully the people at Xtreme Xperience control what is going on with driving on the track, it seems very unlikely that a car might be totaled unless a driver was to completely disregarded the rules. It would seem much more likely a smaller mishap, such as sliding off the track, might occur causing minor damage to the car. Here the insurance packages are important too as they have varying deductibles ranging from $1,000 to $5,000. It would not be hard to do $20,000 of damage to one of these cars and wind up paying the first $5,000 of it with the cheapest package.

I decided go with the middle level package ($59) that came with a $2,500 deductible and $85,000 coverage.

Track Day

On track day my son and wife decided to accompany me to the raceway. After parking I checked in at a tent confirming my identity with my driver's license. I was then given a wrist band that signified I was a driver. The color, orange, told everybody I'd be driving the Ferrari. I saw some people with multiple wrist bans indicating they were driving multiple different cars that day (Xtreme Xperience sells a three car experience starting at $659).

Perhaps my single complaint for the day was that anybody with you must buy a "Pit Pass" to get anywhere near the action. The passes cost $15 for the privilege of sitting in the grandstand. Sorry, but this particular expense, which costs Xtreme Xperience absolutely nothing more, seems gouging to me given the high cost of the experience itself.

So after paying $30 for my wife and son to get in, I headed over to a tent for my racing instruction. This consisted of a race car driver that is part of Xtreme Xperience team giving you a lecture on the basics of how to drive on a race track. Even if you have track experience, you still have to sit though the lecture and get a stamp on your hand to signify you attended.

To help novices on the track, they use a system of cones to indicate where you should brake, start your turn, the location of the apex of the turn and where you should come out of a turn. Given that you only get three circuits on the track, this is extremely helpful information as you don't need to waste laps learning the layout.

After I got my stamp I headed over to the "pit area" where the cars are pulling on and off the track. Canopies were set up there with lines of drivers waiting for each car underneath. I lined up in the Ferrari que and got a "sock" for my head and a serious driving helmet. While I was in line somebody came along and briefed us on the particular quirks of our car. We were told the Ferrari's brakes took a firm squeeze and we should "roll on" to its accelerator.

The cars go out in groups with a professionally driven Mitsubishi Evo at the head as a pace car. People who just want to experience what it is like to ride on a racetrack at high speed can hitch a ride on the Evo for $40.

On the Racetrack

The "pit" area is just behind the grandstand. The cars pull off here right next to where the drivers are lined up. Finally when it was my turn the man in charge cut the ban off my hand and pointed me to where the Ferrari was pulled up.

I climbed in and introduced myself to Jeff my instructor in the right-hand seat. While some of the staff travel from racetrack to racetrack with the cars, many of the in-car instructors are locally based. Jeff's full-time job was at one of the state colleges. This gave us something in common as I teach at a state college too.

Despite being bigger than a Lambo, the Ferrari was still a tight fit for me. If I didn't have to wear the helmet my head would just be brushing he roof. With the helmet, which adds about 2 inches to my height, I needed to scrunch down into the seat. Jeff helped by adjusting the steering wheel height a bit. In the end I wouldn't want to take a cross country trip jammed in there like that, but for 3 laps it was fine.

The Ferrari, as all the other supercars in being driven that day, used a floppy paddle transmission. This is basically a manual transmission where the shifting and double-clutch system is controlled by a computer. The driver can override the computer by using the paddles to shift up and down, but in class they don't recommend it as the computer is generally smarter than most drivers.

Jeff told me to squeeze one of the paddles to put the car in gear and we were ready to line up behind the Evo. For some reason, perhaps they thought the Ferrari will be fastest of the supercars (but not in my hands) I got to go right behind the pace car. The Huracán pulled up behind me.

The Evo headed out onto the track and I followed it trying to duplicate the way the driver was taking the turns. Despite being not being a supercar and not having a huge engine, the Evo is in professional hands was extremely hard to keep up with. Especially as I was loath to enter the turns at 80 miles per hour in a quarter million dollar car.

I did soon get the knack of starting a curve at the outside, turning and hitting the apex and pulling back out smoothly. I couldn't quite get the nerve up to keep the throttle full down for more than a few seconds, however. When I did the car leaped forward pushing the instructor and I back into our seats like we are on board a rocket.

I was too busy driving to be checking the speedometer all the time, but I estimated my top speed on the longest straight-away at about 100 miles per hour. The truth is that the track we were on was so twisty that you couldn't really get going much with speed before you needed to start braking to take the next turn.

Enzo's Ghost

While the experience is not a race, because the drivers are at different skill levels, it is sometimes necessary that one vehicle pass another. In my case the driver of the Huracán managed to overtake me near the end of my second lap and Jeff had me pull to one side to let it pass.

However, as soon as it went by, Jeff, encouraged me to try and overtake it. "That's a Lamborghini up there! You have a Ferrari! The ghost of Enzo Ferrari is going to haunt you if you don't catch up with him!"

I tried my best, but by the end of my third lap, when we turned off the track to enter the pit area, I was still behind him. I will just have to deal with the ghost of Ferrari's founder, I suppose.

Was the experience worth the $270? As an once-in-a-lifetime experience, I would say yes. With a few caveats. If you are looking to just see how a supercar drives, there are cheaper programs that will take you out on the road at regular highway speeds. In the one I'm thinking of, a group of five supercars are driven together in sort of a convoy and every five minutes or so the divers switch around to experience different cars. The three lap racing experience I took was fun, but it was more expensive and you only got to try one car.

If you really want to learn how to race, there are programs that involve cheaper cars, with instruction, for longer times and more laps for similar money. Of course, you don't get to brag you drover a Ferrari with these, but you probably get a better feel of what it is like to drive on a race track.

Still, I would not have traded the Ferrari experience for almost anything. Well, except for maybe being short enough to fit in that lambo.

Copyright Lee Krystek 2015. All Rights Reserved.