It was the afternoon, I was enjoying some drinks with my friend at my house in Nice. Suddenly my phone vibrates, I pick it up to see who was daring to bother me in my relax while watching the sea. It was an email, showed it to my friend and he immediately said: "We'll go on the Beech". I agreed...
It was early on the morning, we went to bed quite early because we wanted to depart as early as possible. We planned all the way to our destination. The route was going to take us all through the coastline and then into mainland, did I say where we were heading to? Ooops, nope... We were going to Milan.
The sun was barely shinning over the horizon when we arrived to the airport to get all the clearances. By the time the sun was over the horizon we were boarding my friend's B60 that took him all the way from Germany.
The engines were quickly running and we were taxing to the runway.
A departure heading north was selected, the winds helped also. In less than a few hundred meters we were flying and heading to Italy!
We took off with beautiful views of the cliffs and the city. All of them illuminated by the slowly-orange-to-yellow sun making it's way to the other side of the horizon.
The climb to FL200 was quite good and fast. At that altitude we were seeing a TAS of 200/220 kts even with some headwinds, which would play a role while we were getting closer to our destination.
Genova is under us, that meant that an almost 90° turn had to be made to take us to our destination.
Uneventfully we continued our trip till I decided it was a good time to take a look to the fuel gauge. It was very low, but we were about to start our descend. We went for a comfortable 1000ft/min descent, so we started like 15nm out our destination. A longer descent meant that our throttles would be a longer time in idle, saving us some precious liquid dead dinosaurs :P
And so we started our descend...
Finally, Milan was there and so it was our destination. San Ciro stadium, home of AC Milan. Destination was almost 10 minutes away.
We decided to go to the smaller airport of Verese, lower fees and closer to our destination.
Even though visibility was quite limited, it didn't prevented us of getting to our airport...
Tight turn to align and we were almost there.
Few feet from the threshold!
Few feet from the ground!
After a smooth landing, we went to our parking. Low on fuel, mixture levers were taken to cut-off position and the flight was concluded!
We rushed away from the airfield to take a car to the small town of Monza, few kilometers away. This was our real destination. In the trip I talked with my friend about how good the B60 handled and how easy it was to fly. We concluded that for the trip back we were going to take more fuel on board.
After almost an hour after landing we arrived "Autodromo di Monza"... I showed the invitation letter to the event on my phone and we were welcomed with a smile and a "Benvenutti!"
And there she was... The real purpose of the flight... A state of the art aerodynamic and mechanical marvel, the latest Ferrari model. THE Ferrari... LaFerrari.
Almost all CFRP, it's the most advanced and most powerful Ferrari ever, 900+ HP in an amazing combination of a V12 + electric motors ready to take you to 100km/h in almost 3secs and to speeds of over 340km/h all through its rear wheels. And it was in a mythic track and all for me. So stop talking and more images!
The sound invades the cockpit and you hear the engine scream for more, and so you do. Until... BAM! You feel your head wanting to go past the front windshield, the big brakes slow you down in less than 200m to a close chicane and then your back is pushed forward again to the back of the seat...
But there was another surprise, another classic Ferrari the F40, the latest supercar that Enzo Ferrari would ever take care personal involvement on its development..
And of course the other current line up product, the 458, which has an uncanny resemblance...
After some hours of fun we were ready to head back home...
Thanks for reading!