Racing School - Front Man

Dude, Learn to Drive.

On Tuesday, February 21, 2006, millionaire Stefan Eriksson was found near his utterly smashed Enzo Ferrari in the hills of Malibu, California. The car had been split in half from impact with a telephone pole at what Malibu police determined to be 162 mph. Stefan had a split lip, a rather sheepish grin, and a story about a German guy who actually wrecked the car and fled into the hills. The initial report was that he was drag racing before a crest in the road upset the car and sent it spinning.

In my opinion, the guys at Ferrari get all of the credit for saving Stefan's and the alleged German driver's lives. They must have known at some level that giving the public a V-12 that produces 660 hp in a 3,000-pound chassis was going to be a handful, so they built in a few safety features. The carbon-fiber cockpit was designed to take a tremendous impact then dissipate energy by jettisoning body panels and crush structures to save the occupants. Formula One champion Michael Schumacher had a huge part in the design and testing of the Enzo. He's likely wrecked more Ferraris than any man alive.

So why do you care about the playboy and his poor judgment? As the Primedia IT department likes to say, "The problem was in the chair." Whoever was driving the Enzo was clearly in over his head if he thought he could make any corner at 162 mph, not to mention the fact that he was on a public road. Makes me wonder if he had any idea what he was in for, and makes me doubt he was a car guy of any sort.

Seeing the 400 yards of pricelessFerrari debris spread across the highway hit home for me because I am a former numskull driver who once had more car than skill. The above photo was taken in 1989, right after I was escorted to the trauma center at Overlake Hospital in my hometown of Bellevue, Washington. With a cage full of broken ribs, I lay on a cold slab using one lung to breathe, quietly trying to make sense of it all. Looking back, it's obvious that too much throttle followed by panicky flailing of the steering wheel and brake pedal sent me into oncoming traffic during a rainstorm. Lesson learned? The fundamentals jelled with each breath and The Fear that was instilled from that day forward kept me out of the throttle for years to come.

I still built hot rods, like the Corvette I mentioned a few months back, but nothing like the cars that began to come together when I graduated from college and began to apply my knowledge and resources to a project. My 13-second stuff turned into 11-second stuff, and my street bikes went deep in the 10s at around 130 mph. With the knowledge required to build the vehicles came the respect for how they might kill me. That's when my street fun moved to the track.

Enjoyed this Post? Subscribe to our RSS Feed, or use your favorite social media to recommend us to friends and colleagues!