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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.

Watch a Ferrari LaFerrari drift, almost crash at the Nurburgring

It's a fair bet that we could have just written the words "LaFerrari," "Nurburgring," "drifting" and "videos," and drawn just as many eyeballs as a proper bit of text. But, our bosses say four-word posts aren't okay, so here we are. Today, we have a pair of videos featuring the topics mentioned above. The first video, shown up top, is what most of us think we could do, were we handed the keys to a wildly powerful hybrid Ferrari and given access to the world's most famous race track. We'd drift about and generally have an absolute riot The second video, shown below, is what would actually happen were we given a LaFerrari on the Nurburgring – we'd go too slow and scare the hell out of ourselves. Give both videos a look. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Related Video:

Faraday Future to hire former Ferrari exec Marco Mattiacci

Electric car manufacturer Faraday Future has lured a very big fish to its executive pond, hiring former Ferrari executive Marco Mattiacci, a source told Autoblog. Business Insider also reported the move. It's unclear what role Mattiacci will have at Faraday, but he served with distinction at Ferrari. Between 2006 and 2014, he was the head of Ferrari North America and Ferrari Asia Pacific, though that success didn't translate to motorsports. Mattiacci succeeded Stefano Domenicali as team principal of Scuderia Ferrari in April 2014 and led the team to a fourth-place finish, behind Mercedes, Red Bull, and Williams. The Scuderia were not pleased and Mattiacci resigned. Faraday is no stranger to snagging talent from other automakers. It hired employees from Ford, GM, and BMW and has done an especially good job of poaching talent from Elon Musk. It lured Tesla's vice president of regulatory affairs and deputy general counsel, James Chen, last month. Faraday hired the head of Model S production, Dag Reckhorn, to serve as its global VP of manufacturing, and in April it brought in Tesla's director of global supplier industrialization, Andrew De Haan, to run the Faraday's Nevada factory. Business Insider reports Faraday has even poached SpaceX employees. We expect more hiring from Faraday in the future, too. The company's website is packed with California-based positions for everything from vehicle safety to autonomous driving to product planning. Related Video: News Source: Business InsiderImage Credit: Dom Romney / Getty Images Green Hirings/Firings/Layoffs Ferrari Autonomous Vehicles Electric faraday future faraday marco mattiacci