It Revs My Engine

As any boy who grow up in the Midwest, I had friends and family who owned and worked on cars. My uncle Bob owned a garage on the same rural lot as his home, where I spent many of my childhood days in Ohio, and a cousin drove a racing striped Chevy Nova that announced his arrival anywhere with a growl. I remember the men of my dad’s church once organizing a trip to the Indy 500. Cars fire a boy’s imagination like little else, but like many boyhood fires it tends to fade over time. At least for me…until recently. I have recently become reacquainted with the world of auto racing, and I can’t believe I ever lost interest.

My infatuation started, like many others it seems, with watching the Netflix series F1 Drive to Survive, which I only watched at the recommendation of a friend. He was not otherwise a motorsports fan, but is married to an Aussie fan of Daniel Ricciardo, an Australian F1 driver with a lot of personality. I found I enjoyed the series, which made me wonder if the actual F1 races were as interesting as the series made them seem.

I found that an annual membership to watch F1TV was less than $30, so I joined. I couldn’t watch the races in real time due to licensing requirements in Italy, but I could watch enough to find that yes, indeed, the races were quite entertaining (At least, until Max Verstappen and Red Bull began their extraordinary run of winning.), and the cars and drivers were all fascinating. Surprised by my own eager interest, I began to wonder what else might be available to satisfy my newly revitalized interest in fast cars.

Living in Europe made it seem natural to look into attending the annual race in Le Mans, France. However, our plan to go to the 24-hour endurance race of legend evaporated when the tickets sold out within 3 days, one day before I tried to buy ours, but in researching the 24 Hours of Le Mans, I discovered the various other racing series related to it within the world of endurance racing – including the European Le Mans Series, ELMS. The ELMS utilizes all the same classifications of cars as the 24hr Le Mans, except for the hyper car class, and has six races around Europe, including one at Mugello, an easy road-trip away in Italy.

About $40 each bought the four of us full access to all the races over the weekend, add two nights at an AirBnB in Tuscany on a mountain overlooking the valley, and gas for the round trip and it all cost less than one F1 ticket—even with €35 in tolls each way. Sold. Off we went.

We left on a Friday after the boys got home from school. It was an early release day, so after the roughly five-and-a-half-hour drive we still arrived with daylight to spare. The daylight was particularly helpful because the one-lane mountain roads would have been more nerve-wracking in the dark. As it was, the coordinates our AirBnB host gave me took us to the front door of the home, down a street with nowhere to turn around. I ended up having to back my truck up out of the little piazza before I could turn around and drive to the parking lot in back. This was down a steep incline behind a gate but ended in a safe, level place to park the Dodge.

Once we were checked in, we drove part-way back down the mountain to the Albergo Ristorante in the town of Tre Fiume. They were kind enough to let us sit a little bit early, before they actually opened for supper, and we were able to sample some of the local Tuscana pasta dishes. Desert was also delightful, as was the service. Fortunately, Justyn and Matthew have been taking Italian in school (from an Italian) and were able to help us communicate when google translate was too slow.

I enjoyed my coffee the next morning on the small front porch of the little house, which allowed me to greet some of the friendly neighbors as they passed by. I could also hear the race cars in the valley below going through their practice and qualifying rounds. There were some “down-ticket” races going on, like the Porsche Carrera Cup France and the Ligier European Series. This latter one was particularly interesting, and we got to see the end of one of their races, since it involved cars of a kind I hadn’t heard of before built specifically for racing.

Nora found a nice little Greek restaurant in town where we had gyros and souvlakia for lunch before heading to the track for the ELMS Qualifying rounds that afternoon. During qualifying each of the four classes of car and driver take turns, as a class, to try and drive the fastest lap. The field at the start of the race is ordered from front to back with the fastest at the front, and starting at the front is a huge advantage so drivers really push the limits of themselves and their cars. Those laps were fun to watch, and they were followed by the Michelin Le Mans Cup series race that evening, our first taste of what this kind of racing was like. I was glad I remembered to bring ear plugs.

Our two-day tickets gave us access before the race to walk through the pit lane and meet the drivers. Picking up autographs and meeting men whose names I’d seen on various racing circuits was a lot of fun and really unique, I’ve never seen a sports autograph session so open and the athletes so accessible. One of the scarce American drivers, John Falb, struck up a conversation with Matthew about baseball. It turns out that Falb is a Padres fan.

After pit row, we even got to walk the grid when the cars were on the track in their positions to start the race. I was a child all over again: “Look at that! Look at this!” Neither of these encounters was as long as I’d hoped, and like the novice I am I budgeted my time poorly. I didn’t get to see the GT3 cars as closely as I saw the others. This, of course, leaves a me a goal and a reason to attend another race in the future.

The race was four hours long, so we moved around a bit, getting lunch from a barbecue place in the paddock (the pulled pork was delicious) which we ate in our seats while watching the race. Most of the drivers were new to this track and provided lots of action between the several yellow flags. There was even a red flag that stopped the race for 20 minutes because of a rather significant crash right at the exit of pit lane, but all but two cars finished the race.

The public address announcer spoke mainly Italian, and his English was often indecipherable, but yet provided much entertainment. He would chuckle at his own mystifying observations, and I’ve never before heard so many “Mama Mias,” which he would exclaim each time a driver would execute a daring overtake or nearly wreck his car in the attempt.

Though clearly this trip was mainly for me, and I probably enjoyed every aspect more than Nora and the boys did, I think we all did enjoy the experience. Tuscany is beautiful, and in late September the weather was cool and autumnal – we even drove through a cascade of falling leaves. The AirBnB accommodations provided their own entertainments which we enjoyed, and it was good to add a new experience to our travels. We visited no museums or churches on this trip.

This mini-vacation definitely provided a much needed refueling, and will help give me the drive I to get back to work refreshed, ready for the twists and turns of the road ahead. At least, until the next pit stop.