When some of the owners stopped by for coffee and pastries, we stopped by, too, and enjoyed the best espresso doppio I’ve had in years. Talk about quintessential Italian life! But this reverence proved short-lived. In my over-caffeinated, sleep-deprived state, I soon made a math error that cost us a few seconds on the next average speed test.
The view was generally amazing.
Credit: Pollstar
The view was generally wonderful.
Credit: Pollstar
After the first sector, we regrouped with the rest of the green cars and stuck behind the Ferraris while driving slowly on a gravel section during a time trial. (Ahead of us, last year’s Green winner Mirko Magni sacrificed the entire stage to let the gap grow. Later, he explained that the penalty for missing time by five seconds is the same as five minutes, something we never found in the English rulebook translation.)
That night, we got a miraculous five hours of sleep, but I still woke up worried about my ranking. Sure, we did well in scoring but also earned two “TC” penalties. I got behind the wheel of the Polestar, but today we decided to stop for an early morning espresso, as we had learned to enjoy ourselves the day before. This time, the vintage cars joined us, and while a support crew was replacing a bad spark plug on a Bugatti Type 37, I drank my much-needed caffeine.
We then tried to keep up with a veritable fleet of open-wheel Bugattis and Alfa Romeos while driving down one of the most incredible mountain roads ever. In the Polestar, we could have easily gone faster, but instead we sat confused by the sights, sounds and smells of loud tires screeching, engines roaring and smoke spewing smoke, and drivers and passengers having to lean into turns as hard as possible. In fact, these century-old cars went faster than the supporting crew, and eventually got stuck in ruts on the narrow roads west of Servia.
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