How the Ferrari P4/5C Racer Battled Fate at the Nürburgring 24 Hours -& the Feature

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June 2011

The Nürburgring 24 Hours is like The Perfect Storm in a forest. Rain, shine, or snow, more than 220,000 racing fans, powered by the best beer in the world, gather for the most overwhelming pagan auto race on earth. Wall Streeter Jim Glickenhaus, owner and patron of the privateer Ferrari F430–based P4/5 Competizione—about which you can read in tantalizing depth here—was a first-timer at the 2011 event, and he was awestruck. “It’s like Woodstock! People camp out in the woods for days. There are rock concerts. There’s a burning man [like at Burning Man]! It’s unbelievable!”

Nowhere, however, is the 24 Hours more unbelievable than on the track itself. The Nürburgring encompasses 12.9 dizzying miles and dozens upon dozens of turns. Long ago, the great Jackie Stewart dubbed it—with feeling—the Green Hell, owing to its beautiful forest scenery and diabolical difficulty. When almost 200 race cars take the grid to battle for 24 consecutive hours—or at least punt that mother just ahead out of the way—it’s racing hell, pure and simple.
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So Glickenhaus and his team came prepared. The P4/5C contested two earlier six-hour races on the track to give the team’s four stellar drivers a taste of what was to come. This was crucial, because they would be racing a new car through the black of night, and possibly in heavy rain. Former F1 greats Mika Salo and Nicola Larini, British Touring Car champion Fabrizio Giovanardi, and seasoned Nürburgring veteran Luca Cappellari would need all the laps they could get.

Come Play, but Don’t Try So Hard, Okay?

This is an intensely German national event, pitting Porsche, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi against one another. The Nürburgring officials, while courting Glickenhaus to bring his Italian-American one-car entry, were not going to let some auslander American gum up the war among the Big Four. Accordingly, the race rules required the P4/5C to run with a miserly restrictor ring that cost it horsepower and straightaway speed. After the first spring practice race, Glickenhaus protested. The car was being passed by many lesser cars. Is that what the organizers really wanted? He was allowed a slightly more liberal restrictor ring, restoring about 20 hp—for a total of 470—to the P4/5C’s 4.0-liter, four-cam Ferrari V-8. The change increased straightaway speed from 161 mph to 167, although it wasn’t enough to threaten the factory cars.

The final setup was good for 36th on the grid, well behind the top three starters—a Ferrari 458 Italia and two Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3s. When the green flag dropped at 4 p.m. on Saturday, June 25, both AMGs blasted past the Ferrari, but their lead wouldn’t last. The best Mercedes was in third late in the race but fell out. The next-best Mercedes settled for sixth overall.

Early on, the Porsche GT3 RSRs and the lone, very fast 911 GT3 R hybrid battled with the front-engine, rear-transaxle BMW M3 GTs. The P4/5C showed good speed. After losing time removing rain tires—the leaders called the drizzle’s bluff and ran straight through on intermediate rubber—the P4/5C pushed forward from 36th to 29th.

You Can’t Turn Laps in the Pits

The primary goal during this fiendish exercise is, of course, to stay out of trouble, but that can be blind luck. After three hours, the P4/5C’s tail was punched by another competitor near the famed Karussell corner, cutting its left-rear tire. It had to limp slowly around the long track to the pits. A new tire was fitted, but the full extent of the damage didn’t become evident until later, when the six-speed Ferrari gearbox locked in fourth gear. The proverbial $10 part in the shift mechanism had been damaged in the shunt and finally failed. The car’s agonizingly long stops for repairs totaled three hours—about 20 laps. The P4/5C fell to 103rd.

The team battled manfully through the night. With the car running properly again, it began overtaking four or five cars each lap. Cappellari, the P4/5C’s resident ’Ring expert, said, “In the night, passing is very dangerous, because the cars can’t see you coming—and suddenly you are on them.” But the team was determined, one way or another, to finish. When the checkered flag fell in bright sun at 4 p.m. Sunday, the battered P4/5C had covered 133 laps, climbing to 41st, very nearly where it had started.

The overall win went to the impressive Team Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 RSR, driven by Germans Marc Lieb and Timo Bernhard, Frenchman Romain Dumas, and Lucas Luhr of Switzerland. They led from 11:25 p.m. Saturday to the end, setting a new record of 156 laps and 2460 miles. But they were pressed constantly by the runner-up BMW M3 GT of Jörg Müller, Augusto Farfus, Uwe Alzen, and Pedro Lamy, which finished on the same lap. Audi R8 LMS GT3s finished third through fifth, ahead of the first Mercedes SLS AMG GT3. (Incredibly, this year marked Team Manthey’s fifth win of the past six Nürburgring 24 Hours.)

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Into the Future

The P4/5C, for its part, finished second in its class, the experimental E1-XP2 category. But if we were playing woulda-coulda-shoulda, it would’ve finished sixth or seventh if it hadn’t lost three hours in the pits. The Nürburgring organizers awarded the P4/5C, together with entries from Toyota and Aston Martin, a Constructor’s Trophy for entering new and significant cars. And Glickenhaus was invited to bring his unique car back next year. Will he do it?

“I really don’t know,” he says. ”There are a lot of things to consider between now and then. We’ll see.”

Meanwhile, the car is taking a well-earned vacation. It will be on display in Turin’s National Automobile Museum for a month while Glickenhaus considers his next move.

Source: p45c.com, car&driver.com

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Pilots:

- Nicola Larini
- Mika Salo
- Luca Cappellari
- Fabrizio Giovanardi

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