Page 50 - Phonebox Magazine April 2010

Ferrari and my old Boots
I'LL COME STRAIGHT to the point. I am 6ft 2" tall, I take an 11 shoe, and whilst I wouldn't want to admit to being fat, I probably have the same body mass index number as a pork scratching! I just don't look very.....Italian. I think you can probably see where this is going.
I had a Ferrari in 2001 for about 3 months, and because of my job, I now drive them most weeks. I love love love Ferrari.
You know when you were growing up and you respected your elders, well it's a bit of that right there going on. The Ferrari is older and wiser than me, faster and stronger, sharper and even more successful than...Cheese. Age and experience at Ferrari have produced the revered older brother of all cars. And the daft part is, as long as we can afford it, we can have one. How mad is that?
No special license, no training, just jump in and apply the “usual driving rules”.
How hard can it be? Well I can help you there....
They say that the first 15 minutes of driving a Ferrari are probably the most memorable.
Pictures:
I delivered this car this week..In my Socks.
In my case, the first 4 minutes were definitely the most memorable.
Italian Ferrari-driving men it transpires don't generally buy their stylish, compact and very petite footwear from Jones the Boot makers. I on the other hand do.
I should explain. In a Ferrari, there is at most a fag paper gap between the loud pedal and the stopper in a foot well the size of a Thomas the tank engine lunchbox, and just 4 seconds between standstill and 60mph.
So, just jump in, start up, have a quick look at any non- standard controls, heave a bunch of pressure on to the agricultural or "sports" clutch, and simply apply those usual driving rules. It was at the "Ease up the clutch whilst depressing the accelerator" stage of those rules that I was met with the full force of the angry almighty beast! Bang...
it shot off, in a dead straight line at full tilt. The tyres screamed their loudest protest and scribbled 2 perfectly straight black stripes on to the tarmac in a puff of Smoke and smell.
Now I'd have been proud of my takeoff had I meant to do it, and more importantly, had I not been facing the wrong way in a one way street on the wrong side of the road...in Spain.
You see one of my Jones's had got wedged irrevocably under the brake pedal and on to the gas. So whilst my hurriedly dipping the clutch did indeed stem the increase in forward momentum, I'd still got enough residual puff going on to coast me....to the coast. I ripped my foot out of my boot and stamped on the brake.
What we learn at this point, is that at Ferrari, when you stuff your thoroughbred racing car full of "go" on the one hand, you compensate
by giving it equal "stop" on the other. Had I still got my brake-foot boot on, to just apply a little more down force, I am to this day convinced that I would have spent a little quality time on the motorbike which I diverted whilst coming the other or "right" way.
I stopped in the middle of the road, traffic building an orderly cue ahead, although strangely nothing building behind me, and just got out.
Being very English about the whole situation, I casually walked a complete lap of the car as if looking for the culprit of this lunacy, with only one boot on, I think I was half-secretly looking for the remains of the motorbike and it's bewildered rider, no sign of him or it. So, got back in and reversed in to the first available space, switched off, locked up, and sat in a bar in a different street for 2 hours re- grouping.
These days I have a healthy respect for the prancing horse and it's racing pedigree and apply a brand new set of driving rules whilst on board. As I would expect you to do too if you ever have the pleasure of driving one... in your socks.
Paul Kitchen, Motor Broker and Motor Writer
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