Master GT Maserati

Driving a Maserati on track is a powerfully addictive experience. And if ex-Ferrari driver Ivan Capelli is there to give you some advice, a special experience can turn into a magical and instructive event.

This is what the Master GT Maserati has to offer, with instruction in high speed driving safety at the wheel of Maserati sports cars – without a doubt the best way to improve and refine your skills for dangerous situations while enjoying yourself in a number of race laps timed with full-on telemetry and car camera, just like in Formula 1.

A day at Varano
The fascination of Maserati and its technology is not limited to sales and so it is that we find the hotel waiting room at 8:15am already crowded with smiling faces, ready to take up the challenge of a hard day’s driving on the track.

After having given us a number of gadgets and a "very important" videocassette, which we will be using later in the day, the organisers invite us to the conference room where the instructors, led by Ivan Capelli and well-known TV presenter and ex-Formula 1 driver Andrea De Adamich give us a warm welcome.

Capelli proves himself to be not only a fast driver but also an excellent speaker, familiar to all of us from his many RAI programmes about Formula
1, so that the "boring" theory lesson is transformed into a unique opportunity to hear it directly from the horse’s mouth.

Immediately after 10am we hear the roar of V8 engines, ready to amaze us with their 390 Hp and devastating torque.
We are broken up into several groups and I am lucky to be the first to get onto the track – I could hardly wait to get started.
The cars make a beautiful display, lined up like family cars returning from the summer holidays: eight Maseratis just waiting to be driven…

On track
I get into the GT, a great experience for a first timer, and we start with the first laps round the Varano track, a little less than 3 kilometres, which the car eats up with the power and elegance of a tiger.

The laps are over all too soon, just enough time to memorise a few curves and get to know the instructor who will accompany us through the day.

Once we leave the car we return to the box for a cold drink, just to cool off our excitement for the experience of circuit driving with the ease of the Cambiocorsa gearshift combined with the precision required from brakes and accelerator.

After a few minutes the hostess calls me over. We set off to the car; I adjust the seat and steering wheel to my precise fit. Meanwhile the instructor fits the videocassette into the recorder, presses "rec" and says: "whenever you’re ready!"… Hold down the brake, click with the right hand and off we go.
The GT – at last I am driving it, but although the tarmac is rushing past underneath the car, it still feels like an everyday utility car rather than the wild animal I’d been expecting. But it only takes a small mistake in braking to understand that the GT is literally flying along, and the quite rightly instructor tells me to use the braking marks set out by the traffic cones, which must be observed to the millimetre on the first lap.
With the GT’s software control – using the normal/sport button on the dashboard – set to normal it is hard to make any serious errors, because even if you go into a bend too fast the MSP skid control system corrects the mistake with ease.

Even on the exit life is made easy for me, with the traction control that cuts down the fuel injection even though the accelerator is held down 100%, until the car’s alignment is perfectly capable of avoiding skids.
This dirty style of driving loses a lot of time, though, because the electronic sensors are set so as to maximise safety, which makes everything as easy as driving a normal saloon car, despite the power under the GT’s hood.

The first track laps are essential for getting to know the characteristics of the car and at the same time to allow the instructor to get to know my limits as a driver, so that he can see where to concentrate his efforts: in my case, the instructor saw that I am too aggressive in using the steering wheel and brake pedal, due to the delayed braking reactions…

The Varano track is an easy one to memorise, but it is also difficult to understand the correct trajectory, and so at the end of the first laps I get out of the car and go over the videocassette trying to get the instructor’s advice into my right hand (the left hand is busy with another cold drink) to prepare me for the highlight of the day, the telemetry test…

Just like Formula 1
Just like in Formula 1, the Master GT Maserati gives each participant a shot at his own telemetry, with 5 lines of information covering 5 separate parameters: speed, engine speed, accelerator and brake pedal pressure and steering angle, to which is added the lap time – everyone’s favourite.

The result is a sort of ECG, a real-time record of every movement of the driver, which is then subjected to stringent analysis by the instructor and by Ivan Capelli himself.
Compared to a perfect lap, sporting but not extreme, as driven by Capelli himself, I am 4 seconds down at the end of the second test lap. An eternity, there is no getting away from it, and it is easy to see from the graphs where I have gone wrong and what to concentrate on improving.
Ivan leaves me with a ray of hope by saying that his time was obtained with the sports driving setting, not with the normal mode we were using…

Counter steering
Meanwhile the show goes on and we move to a lot near to the track, which is kept constantly wet by sprinklers. Here, there are two GTs with manual gearshift and all electronic controls shut off, a couple of real raging bulls that we have to tame using only our right feet and a healthy dose of counter steering.
The first laps are really quite impossible, and yet to look at a rally car in competition it all looks so simple…
But once we understand the trick of it, it becomes so much simpler and the V8’s 390 Hp come into play in bringing into line the rear of the car, which seems to have little interest in following the line of the front wheels.

Once this exercise is over, we return to the track to try out the newly restyled Spyder, also with new mechanics and software, just like the GT.
The 22 cm shorter wheelbase makes the Spyder a more nervous drive than the GT, and the quarter hour spent driving on the wet pays off in dealing with this much more sensitive car. But the car is twitchier not only because of its geometry, but because our instructor, rally driver Sergio Pianezzola, has switched on the Sport mode.

As indicated previously by Capelli the car’s handling is completely different: the Cambiocorsa gear shift is now in rapid fire mode, with the exciting rumble of change down to indicate the lower gears engaging as we run through them.
The traction injection control is also more natural, and the electronic suspension calibration makes the shocks more rigid than in normal mode.
It is a wonderful experience to race as fast and safely as this, with a cabriolet, with the summer heat and the roar of the engine – so much more exciting than that of the GT.

Here again we drive only a few laps, with the car camera, before returning to the box. The next drive will be with the GT in Sport mode and full telemetry.

After a short pause we get back on the track with the unleashed Coupé. Its handling at the limit is completely neutral, the electronics allow you to go further with the right foot and even the MSP system is more open to driver control, so that at the end of the lap my time is now only 1 second slower than the reference lap.
A very satisfying result, due not only to the car’s more powerful and responsive setting, but also to much cleaner, more refined driving skills, thanks to the instructors’ excellent advice.

The slide machine
After the umpteenth track circuit, we head for the area reserved for the slide machine. This is a balancing act for driver and car both, where the machine gives a random turn to the rear drive train – random in both direction and strength – and the trick is to combine a cool head and speed to get the car under control as it slides about on a plate of synthetic material made even more slippery by sprinklers.
Here again it is hard at first, but tanks to the instructors’ advice we soon start to get the hang of it, and at the end of the test, just like in the counter steering test, it comes to be an enjoyable game which we do not want to be parted from…

See you next year
By now the course is practically over, everyone is tired but happy, and we take a few last laps around the track with the manual gearshift GTs and Spyders. A real triumph of classic sports driving, even though, notwithstanding the functionality of manual gearing, there is simply no comparison with the ease and speed of use of the Cambiocorsa shift.

The course finishes with a farewell from all the staff and Ivan Capelli gives every participant a diploma to hang on his wall – as ostentatiously as possible, of course…

See you next year!