Ferrari 550 Maranello 1997 on 2040-cars

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Scuderia Corsa ready to recapture glory at Le Mans

There's nothing else in this world like endurance car racing. Be it a relatively short race like the 6 Hours of Nurburgring or 24-hour endeavors like Le Mans or Daytona, drivers and cars alike are put through long and grueling racing that either ends in triumph or heartbreak. At this year's Detroit Grand Prix, we had a chance to sit down with Scuderia Corsa drivers Alessandro Balzan and Christina Nielsen just hours before they left for France to participate in first practice for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Scuderia Corsa competes in the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship team in the GT Daytona class. This is the second year Balzan and Nielsen have partnered, and the relationship has been fruitful. The pair won the class championship in 2016 and are currently sitting in second for 2017. Despite being in the sport longer, this will be Balzan's first attempt at Le Mans. The pair will be joined by American Bret Curtis in the race, usually racing against Balzan and Nielsen behind the wheel of a BMW. "There's a lot to prepare for with this race," Balzan said. "Christina raced there last year, so she's helping me prepare. It's not like any other race, even something like Daytona. There's a lot of preparation that goes into this race." Everything from food intake to sleep schedules has to be adjusted and set appropriately. There's 24 hours of on-track action bookended by pre-race prep and a post-race cool down. Your body and mind must adjust accordingly, and it's not as simple as drinking a few cups of coffee and munching on an energy bar. Scuderia Corsa is the defending class champion at Le Mans, though not with Nielsen behind the wheel. The team is backed by Ferrari and competes with 488 GT3s, a stripped out, lightweight, race-only version of the 488 GTB. The cars share a version the 3.9-liter turbocharged V8, but the rest of the car has been extensively modified, bearing little resemblance beyond styling. "The cars don't share much with the regular car," Balzan said. The interior is all removed and the suspension and aero are all different. It looks similar, but it's really changed. It drives like a totally different car." That's par for the course with GT cars. While they might share more in common with road cars than something like the Porsche 919 Hybrid prototype, the world of race cars and production cars are far removed. That said, Balzan and Nielsen both enjoy the road car correlation.

2015 Ferrari LaFerrari [w/video]

What a year it's been for enthusiasts who love high-performance, higher-dollar automobiles. The past twelve months or so have been consumed with the three horsemonsters of today's hybrid hypercar enlightenment: the Porsche 918 Spyder, the McLaren P1 and the Ferrari LaFerrari. Getting into just two of the three would be better than a lump of coal in one's stocking come holiday time, but for me, it'd still leave things feeling sadly incomplete, gnawing from within 'til the end of days.
Getting the call from Maranello, therefore, was even more fortunate and satisfying. The 918 Spyder - the only seriously green hybrid of the trio - shook me up with its sophisticated menu of technologies. The McLaren P1 remains more of a true hypercar than the Porsche, what with its e-motor designed to boost the lightweight beast to supernatural speeds above any terrestrial concerns like fuel efficiency. And now it's time for the Italian with the funny name, LaFerrari. No mistake about it: I've been waiting all year for this car a little more than I've been waiting for the other two.
This run of hypercars built up over the year like a famous three-part opera: The enthralling start of the drama sitting in the Porsche 918, tear-assing the heavier green dart around a track in Spain; then on to the UK with the lightness and quick heart of the biturbo V8 in McLaren's track-inspired P1, and it was all to be topped-off at Fiorano with the LaFerrari, fit for a Wagnerian finish.

What next for Stefano Domenicali?

Ferrari is a team that's used to being on top. It does, after all, have more world championships to its name - 15 drivers' titles and 16 constructors' - than any other team in the history of Formula One racing. But despite having some of the best drivers and resources at its disposal, it hasn't won a championship in over five years. Someone had to take the blame for that, and that someone turned out to be Stefano Domenicali.
The team principal who took over after Jean Todt stepped back to focus first on the running of the entire company and then the FIA, Domenicali has presided over the driest spell in the team's history since Michael Schumacher and Ross Brawn arrived in the late 90s to bring Ferrari back to its winning form. Whether that ultimately proves to have been Domenicali's fault or not, the buck stopped on his desk and he resigned a couple of weeks ago, making way for Ferrari's North American chief Marco Mattiacci to take the reins. At least for now, anyway, as rumors circulate of a longer-term solution that could bring Ross Brawn back into the fold following his recent departure from Mercedes.
The big question now, however, is what Domenicali will do next. The latest intel suggests that he could leave four wheels behind but stay in the field of competitive sports to coach an Italian basketball team. The rumors are fueled by reports that Domenicali has been in touch with Giovanni Petrucci, head of the Federazione Italiana Pallacanestro - Italy's national basketball federation. The organization runs two professional basketball leagues within Italy as well as its national team that's won eight international championships, two gold, four silver and four bronze medals in the European league and two silver medals in the Olympics.