More international travels.

Last November I took the final and hardest ASE certification test for advanced engine performance and managed to pass it this time. It was the last requirement i needed to become a Ferrari Master Certified technician and in february i was awarded with exactly that and as of now there are only 28 masters in the US. At that time I was told that the national training manager wanted to take all of the American master techs to the Ferrari Training Center in Maranello, Italy at the factory. and that I'd better get my passport ready. Well in early september i received a letter inviting me to go to the factory and be trained by the actual people that designed and built the cars that i work on every day. I didn't need to be asked twice.

I left on sept 27th and flew through Paris to Bologna Italy. Another tech from Toronto was on the same flight from Paris so we took a taxi from the airport to Maranello together. When we got to our hotel we realized how basic the hotel rooms in italy are. just a place to sleep and shower. so we walked around town together to check it out. Downtown in Maranello there is a movie theatre where they show the F1 races live and anyone can go in for free. It just happened to be a race day with the first ever night race being held on the streets of Singapore. It was great to watch from a place with such a long history of motor racing. A bit like "travelling to Mecca" for me. Unfortunatly the race was a disaster for Ferrari. Oh well.

Class started the next day, we had only 5 techs in the class so we were able to get very deep into some great problems that the instructor had set up for us. Actually the whole class was absolutely first rate and I really learned alot. Wednesday we got a tour of the factory and got to see everything from the foundry where they cast aluminium for the engines, to the final assembly for new cars, to the classic car restoration shop where they keep all the archives for the history of all the racing and road cars going back to the beginning, 1947. Simply Amazing. Unfortunately inside the factory there are no cameras allowed so most of my pics are just from the museum, which wasn't so bad in its own right.

We ate amazing food and everyone had a great time making new friends from all over. Perhaps I'll get to go again in another 7 years.

Zack's international travels

So I'm finally posting a blog about what i got to do this year. Last november my brother Jake told me that he had a good friend that lived in Montreal Canada. Jake knew that there was a Formula 1 race in Montreal and that i was a huge fan, so he asked his friend if we could come and stay with him for a race weekend. He said sure no problem, so Jake and I started looking for cheap tickets to fly there.

For those of you unfamiliar with Formula 1, it is the world championship of motor racing. Auto manufacturers from around the world compete in a global series where races are held in different countries each time. The drivers are the worlds best and the cars are on the leading edge of technology. Mercedes, BMW, Honda, Toyota, and Ferrari all currently race and Ferrari is the only one to compete all through the modern F1 era, and has more Championships than any other by far.

Anyway, this years Canadian F1 race was the only one on the North American continent. Jake and I found tickets for the race in june and booked them in December along with our flight and we were set.

When we got there we were met by Jake's friend Poresh and his friends Sonny and Kunal and they said they had a suprise for us. We had brought our sleeping bags so we could sleep at Poresh's place but they had gotten us a hotel room downtown on Grand Prix weekend and simply refused to allow us to pay for any of it. Then they took us out for some of the best Chinese food I've ever had. We sat on a balcony above the street and were able to watch all the people and cars out for GP weekend which is about like the 24th of july in Manassa but with about 3 million more people. I'd really never seen anything like it.

The race is held on public roads in a huge park on a man made island in the St Lawrence River that was constructed for the 1968 World's Fair. The park is very beautiful with tons of huge trees and waterways and a giant rowing basin that was made for the 1972 Olympic Games. We took the subway to the track and then crossed a bridge and as we were crossing we could hear the cars as they rocketed down the back straight at 215 mph. We were still a half mile from the track! We found our seats and we were only 5 rows up from the track with the cars braking from 200+ down to 45 for the hairpin right in front of us. 4 and half negative G's for the drivers. Anyway we spent 3 great days in Montreal with the track during the day and Jake's friends taking us all over town at night. You can see that I got very sunburned, I didn't care. Thanks to my brother Jake for making this one of the best trips for me ever.