the latest word
2009
It never gets any easier at this level of racing. Despite winning the three major endurance races in the world in 2009 (12 Hours of Sebring, 24 Hours of Le Mans, and the Petit Le Mans), Risi Competizione finds itself behind in a race for the GT2 Championship
Another amazing race for Risi Competizione in which the team starts from last place and finishes on the podium after excellent drives by Melo and Kaffer.
How to win a race in water.
Crashing is a part of racing but it’s still rather amazing to see what happens there is a crash and how it affects the dynamics of the team.
Let’s get to the basics: Be True To Your School. You’re either a Tifosi or you’re not.
There's a sea change in ALMS racing as it's high tide for GT2 factory teams.
It’s not a bad idea to review what you might facing in the next competition, early enough to make appropriate changes in your program. With that in mind, here’s what we’re thinking about the upcoming Mid-Ohio race:
Don's pre-race overview of this weekends Saturday, July 18th, race at Lime Rock Park.
Risi Competizione's win at the 2009 24 Hours of Le Mans was a flawless run, as an analysis of the team's pit stops proved.
In what seems like the most fitting possible tribute to the Ferrari 430GT era, the dominant GT2 car in both ALMS and FIA GT racing over the last four years, Risi Competizione has placed a huge exclamation point on the superiority of this car for endurance racing by taking 1st and 3rd at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
They came riding out of the dustry roads of the deep south, betting their future on a pair of devastatingly brilliant guitarists, Duane Allman and Dickie Betts, a double-set of drummers, and a little brother who had the perfect voice and keyboard skills to deliver a unique style of Southern blues rock.
If you are not lucky enough to at Le Mans today, there are a number of options for covering the race and obtaining a frightening amount of information. Below, our recommendations for a stress free Le Mans experience from the comforts of your own home.
It’s on. Coming into Le Mans as defending champions means carrying a lot of history, hopes, and performance expectation.
Starting a Le Mans preview with “You Can Drive My Car” feels right this year, a year in which a substantial pre-game warmup for the 24 Hours of Le Mans has been spent in reviewing Ferrari’s overall wins (the research was, by the way, a blast to do).
Le Mans, 1965, was the last year that Ferrari took the overall win at in the classic 24 Hour Race and the inaugural year of the now famous Ferrari/Ford battles.
The last victory for Ferrari by a works car came in 1964, when the No. 20, 275P driven by Guichet/Vaccarella took first overall for Ferrari’s eighth win at Le Mans.
There were eleven Ferraris in the 1963 running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans; the massive entry paid off at the end, as Ferraris took six of the first six places.
The full force of Ferrari was felt at Le Mans in 1962, when fifteen Ferraris were entered into the race. The event was a milestone for Ferrari fans because it was the first Le Mans for the Ferrari 250GTO, perhaps the most iconic of all Ferraris ever built.
Ferrari returned to the 1961 24 Hours of Le Mans as defending champions.
Ferrari dominance in sports car racing was starting to emerge in 1960. Sensing the opportunity, the factory organized a slate of 12 Ferraris for the 1960 running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Another changing of the guard occurred at Le Mans in 1959, when Aston Martin put on a marvelous show and placed a pair of DBR1/300s into first and second place overall, winning the Sports Category.
The 1958 edition of The 24 will be remembered as the first great battle between Ferrari, Aston Martin and Jaguar (seeking a 6th outright win). The Ferrari entry list was 10 cars strong...
Ferraris were entered in mass at Le Mans in 1957. A total of nine Ferraris came to Le Mans but only two finished.
The world had changed rather dramatically by the time the 1956 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans rolled around. Le Mans itself was reconfigured to prevent future disasters like the one that occurred a year before.
For racing fans, the 1955 running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans was a very black day...
The 1954 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans was contested on the 12th and 13th of June. The Ferrari entry for this race was compact: four Ferraris. In a scene reminiscent of years past, only one Ferrari survived the race...
Four Ferraris started the race but only one finished, the No. 15 Type 340MM, entered by Scuderia Ferrari and driven by the Marzotto brothers, Paola and Gianni. The 340MM was a strikingly beautiful Ferrari...
The 24 Hours of Le Mans resumed competition for the first time since 1939 on the weekend of June 25th and 26th in 1949. Entered, also for the first time, was a new promising sports car marque out of Maranello, Italy: Ferrari, represented by a pair of Ferrari 166MMs.
Ferrari started racing at Le Mans in 1949. This week, mixed in with other postings on the blog, I will be reviewing the sixty year history of Ferrari at Le Mans.... this will give us all the chance to revisit some of the greatest racing Ferraris of all time, and the men who drove them to glory and tears and fame, often at great personal and financial expense.
To properly place the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the spectrum of automobile racing—to place it, even, in the spectrum of sports—you must develop an appreciation for the unique approach to sports that the French have developed.
Utah is something of a polarizing place—people either like it or hate it and, leaving sociology out of the debate, much of the passion concerns the topography of the place.
Let me give you 100 sentences about the 100 minutes of Long Beach ... and I suggest you put on a little Albert King for background.
Why is it always rock n’ roll and speed? Why is it that a certain song can capture a certain speed and mood with such perfection?
Getting into the flow of things implies that one enters a time/space continuum where all is possible and upcoming events are perceived before they unfold and dealt with in movement. The momentum builds, the flow continues, the forward wave swells, and the impossible becomes the inevitable.
Risi Competizione came into the 2009 Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring with a lot of question marks hanging about the team. Sure, they ran a perfect race at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2008, the most famous sportscar race in the world, winning their class with room to spare—an 8 lap lead to be exact.
I would suggest a 100 decibels worth of “Street Fighting Man” to get you in the mood for racing in the streets in this weekend.
For four years now, Mika Salo has been the best closer in ALMS. The best. Period. Adioski. Goodbye.
There are a couple of great versions of “Everybody’s Talking” but Jimmy Buffet’s take on the song, from his Live in Hawaii album, is, to me, the best. The opening lines echo perfectly the sentiment that surrounds Jaime Melo, the enigmatic driver for Risi Competizione’s No. 62 Ferrari 430Gt.
One of the now-hidden gems of rock & roll is Joe Cocker’s version of Civilized Man. A rocking, pressurized song about doing the right thing and the consequences when you don’t, the song gets even more of an edge from Cocker’s raspy voicing and stagger-lee timing.
We are now into the Civilized Man portion of the 12 Hours of Sebring, which is a segue that only a writer with an iPod full of hit music and a fast computer could make.
Dawn creeps up around the edges of Sebring International Raceway, lighting the perimeter of the track like a halo. In the infield, the annual spring celebrants are moving into mid-day form: coolers open, fires burning, sun tan lotion at the ready.
If you’re reading this blog on a regular or irregular basis ( let’s face it, I only write on an irregular basis), by clicking into the Risi Competizione site you know that this is some enterprise we’re engaged in here.
Think about it: moving cars, tools, a football team’s worth of crew and techs and managers and engineers and specialists from one end of the racing universe to the other.
I haven’t written a darn thing since our last race at Laguna Seca in October.
That was a race I thought we would win, but about 3/4 of the race through, we had a suspension problem and we were lucky to end up on the podium where we did. If our guys, Melo and Salo, hadn’t had a very light touch on the car, we wouldn’t have even been close to the podium, suspension problems usually being terminal in the life of any race car.
