Vince's Stuff: Ferrari Club of America at Tremblant

Awesome F40, same owner also had this F430

At the beginning of last week, I volunteered as an instructor at the Ferrari Club of America Annual Event at Mont Tremblant. I hadn't been to Tremblant recently and this seemed like it would be a fun event to attend now that I have a reliable Civic.

The event was very well organized, and the format was a bit different: instructors were not assigned specific students, but rather just showed up in pit lane and entered the next available car. Our mandate was more to accompany the students, and not "instruct" them as we would at a driver education event. Still, I mostly tried to help my students improve their track driving when I could.

People came to this event from all over North America, and some people even shipped their Ferraris over. As I had hoped, people brought some truly exceptional cars to the event, including many models I had never seen in person (430 Scuderia, 458 Speciale and 488 Pista, 250GT!!!). The level of the drivers was mostly intermediate, as most had been on track before in their Ferraris. Being in the passenger seat of these Ferraris was pretty pleasant. I think the highlights for me were the 308 and the 812 GTS... the least powerful and most powerful cars I rode it. These cars really feel at home on the track and I'm glad these owners were willing to bring them out to such an event.

As for the instructors, they were a bunch of people from many different clubs, including a couple I had met before. I don't know if any instructors had Ferraris... most had BMWs and Porsches. How did the Civic do? Pretty well. I had hoped that the car could lap Tremblant in under 2 minutes, as I had achieved a high 1:58 a few years ago with my old race car when it had a B18cR engine. I figured that with this Civic, which is a bit less of a "race car" but has a bit more power, I should be able to match that time, especially given that I had just installed some new Falken Azenis RT660 tires, which are supposed to be grippier than the Hankook RS4 I usually use.

From my first session, I was in the 2:02 range while taking it relatively easy, so I figured it would be easy enough to go under 2 minutes. It turns out it was not that easy! After a few sessions, I was losing vtec in some corners, and I only later realized that the engine was using a little bit of oil and that I had let the level drop too low. Also, the oil Choo put in the car is so clear that I was having quite a lot of trouble actually checking the oil level!

Anyway, there was one session on the second day (I did 10 sessions in all!) where it all came together and I managed a 1:58.97. I was pretty happy with that, and was disappointed not to have recorded it. The car is well suited to this track. The fact that we haven't installed the limited-slip differential does not really change much at Tremblant. The gearing is just right. Really, there is nothing I can complain about. Running in the instructor group was fun. I had a good time chasing a fellow instructor in a new Porsche 718 GTS and another in an E30 BMW. There was even a Ferrari Challenge car in our group (being driven conservatively). There was so much track time that I (and many others) skipped my last session on day two.

Over all, the car was very reliable and the fact that Alex joined me (she worked all day both days) and that we stayed in an AirBNB in the town of Tremblant just made the event even better. It was a well organized event, with beautiful weather, fantastic cars and en enthusiastic club. I hope I can attend one of the FCA's events again in the future.

As you can imagine, I took a ton of photos: