An inside look at the Ferrari GTO event

Napa Valley doesn't even know what hit it. One minute, there is nothing but the pastoral quiet of daybreak spreading over the foothills and vineyards. Then, without warning, nearly two dozen Ferrari 250 GTOs rev their engines—a chorus of combustion that's music to gearheads—for laps around Sonoma's Infineon Raceway. In a mix of raw velocity and amazing grace, they're participating in Day Three of the Moët & Chandon Tour, a once-every-five-years rally to celebrate perhaps the most coveted vintage sports car in the world. Only 36 GTOs were ever built—all between 1962 and 1964—and for this event 21 of them have been flown in from as far away as England and Japan, forming a holy-roller motorcade of guys who live life in the passing lane, from business to British knights to rock royalty (Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason). But with horsepower comes hazard, and when ex?Microsoft guru Jon Shirley flies around one of the blind turns at 70 mph, his right-hand-drive 1962 GTO 3729 (painted with a 10, its old racing number) suddenly fishtails and then spins out, careening off the track. A nearby Infineon staffer frantically waves a yellow flag, and the cars zooming around the corner slam on their brakes just in time, averting harm to Shirley—or, heaven forbid, the vehicle.

The Gran Turismo Omologato—meaning homologated, or certified, for official racing—has become so mythical that each one is worth up to $20 million. (The owners, of course, would never put a price on their babies and are so devoted to the cause that they have their own version of the Little Red Book: Jess G. Pourret's The Ferrari Legend, the definitive vintage Ferrari volume.) Built in the sixties by Enzo Ferrari to dust the Jags, Porsches, and Aston Martins threatening his racing supremacy, the GTO—with a top speed of 180 mph—dominated the competition from Goodwood to Le Mans. The design was a revelation: a five-speed gearbox and 300-horsepower, 3-liter Colombo V12 engine in an undulating aluminum body with a low nose, like an anteater on steroids.

The occasional brush with death aside, the four-day rally—scorching rubber from the redwoods to the Pacific coast—is just as much an oenophilic odyssey. "It's a chance for us to get together with our cars and eat too much and drink too much," says tour patriarch Peter Sachs, a former partner at Goldman Sachs, whose 1962 GTO 4091 won a string of Italian hill-climbs in the sixties. (It's also a family affair: Most drivers' wives ride shotgun, and Sir Anthony, one of two collectors in the world with a pair of GTOs, has lent his flashy green-and-yellow 1962 GTO 3767 to his daughter Alice, coproducer of The Darjeeling Limited, for the tour.) Not a single door in Napa is closed to this convoy, and we're treated to a series of feasts at no-public-please wineries like the Napa Valley Reserve, a "wine country club" with a $165,000 entry deposit and a membership that speaks an expensive wine patois.

The only problem with GTOs is that some lack speedometers—and many drivers don't consider that a problem at all—so it's only a matter of time until the inevitable brush with California's finest. On the open road, with the racetrack left behind, the drivers caravan briskly through the Lake Berryessa valley, where Mason, Connor, Vestey, and Rhon all get pulled over for doing 70 or 80 mph in a 55 zone. But thanks to some kind of Ferrariphile diplomatic immunity, each gets away without so much as a slap on the wrist.

© Source: mensvogue
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