Last week my friend sent me a message. "What are you doing this weekend, do you want to come to Spa and the Nurburgring with us?" This friend is Maxige78 who owns a Ferrari 599GTO at the moment. I wasn't sure whether to go at first. Then Max mentioned his friend was bringing his LaFerrari.
I immediately said yes.
When he asked, I was in Bahrain on a short trip, just 18 hours in the country to see a friend and shoot his car, then I had an overnight flight which arrived in London at 6:30am. I drove home for a shower then went straight back to the airport so I could fly to Frankfurt and get to the Nurburgring. I was tired, but this was going to be very worth it.
When I got to the hotel the LaFerrari had just been unloaded off the transporter and I caught a little glimpse of it in the parking lot. It really is very special in black. I go in and meet the guys, one of whom is the owner of the LaFerrari, the brilliantly named PowerslideLover on instagram!
We're all hungry from long days so we decide to head to dinner. Immediately Mr PowerslideLover invites me to have a ride in the LaF. What a lovely fellow. It's damp, which is not the ideal condition to experience the car, but he shows me how the electronic systems work doing roll ons in 5th and 6th gear and I'm seriously blown away. He may or may not have lived up to his username once or twice...I'm not at liberty to say.
Skip to Sunday morning, it's time for a quick photoshoot while we wait for the track to dry out. As you can see, this involved fun!
But here's what you really want to know: what was it like on the Nurburgring?
I'm very lucky to have been in quite a few very fast cars and I have to say, this is an experience I'd put above anything else. It's quite hard, especially as a photographer and not a writer, to put into words what the car was like, but what I will say is that the video doesn't really do it justice, it felt like my organs were being rearranged!
Here is that video of the fastest lap PowerslideLover got to do. Unfortunately, after a few European trackdays and 4000km of driving the rear brake pads ran out. That meant we had to slow down half way round the lap, no Porsche 918 beating times here... But what a half a lap it was!
It was the sort of experience that words can't describe, but photos and video sure can.
Oh, and a 991 GT3 and 997.2 GT3RS joined for the journey home...