(Excerpt from Drive Experience Track Day 2018)
• 1° Drive Experience Tr...
Tonight around 2:00 a.m. I couldn't get to sleep, and I was reminded of the day I drove an F40 with Dario Benuzzi alongside, in the hills around Maranello. One of the craziest experiences that happened to me, which I don't think back to as often as it would be natural to do. A thought that plunged into my mind in the middle of the night for no reason-perhaps no reason at all. This morning I learn that perhaps there was a reason instead.
I am not going to get into writing everything I could write. I think the interviews we did together are enough to speak for me in this circumstance. In all the last phone calls the Engineer always closed with "David, come see me," and he said this without specifying the implication "that I don't have that much time yet."
Just in the last phone call a few days ago we got mad at each other about electric cars, and the Engineer said to me "since the journalists pretend not to know or are just stupid, you have to tell it like it is," with his typical way of expressing himself that made half the world fall in love with him, unfortunately only in old age.
We had half an idea to do a new interview, just about the mobility of the future and the contradictions of this supposed electric age, but in the end we always went back to talking about the cars that really interest us. He would ask me for driving impressions every time, of any new model that intrigued him, and I felt important with all this consideration.
He leaves us today the father of the F40, Engineer of a lineage that is unfortunately disappearing and it is up to us to remember and pass on. He also leaves me with an extremely lucid and valuable reference figure who could answer any technical question with a flood of information that was always an honor to hear.
I was immensely fortunate
#NicolaMaterazzi #Ferrari #F40
23 авг 2022
