The latest collecting craze is F1. Not just vintage cars: many are competing with millions for the old Formula One cars, “on which – Michael Schumacher once let slip at a gathering of old glories – I wouldn’t race for all the gold in the world : they are very dangerous machines, exploited in their time to the point of unbelievability, and always ready to break at the most unexpected moment.”
Obviously Schumi was right (many wealthy customers drive them as if they had just been built and if the car is not assisted by a team of professionals as Ferrari does with its Customer Program there is no shortage of risks) but then he too was forced to resort to our national sport, the famous “I have been misunderstood”.
Is it better then the follies of the Japanese who have their cars brought to the top floors of skyscrapers or that of Bernie Ecclestone who has Senna’s McLaren just in his studio? Depends.
A middle ground could be that found by an English Scrooge who bought a McLaren F1 and had it mounted in his living room on an airplane flight simulator transformed into a car simulator. He paid around 4 million euros for it and it was built by Intersim, a company specialized in the construction of aeronautical flight simulators, which used a powerful Onyx 3D computer (the same one with which Steven Spielberg made Jurassic Park) which in turn controls two more computers to control the graphics of the video images that run in front of the pilot. Obviously there is no shortage of movements of the car which, thanks to an oscillating platform, moves like on the track.
In any case, the largest F1 collection in the world is that of the Sultan of Brunei (full name Hassanal Bolkiah Al-Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah ibni Almarhum Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Sa’adul Khairi Waddien) who keeps his collection of 6000 cars in four skyscrapers near the royal palace. Here, in the “F1 section” all the cars that have won the world championship from 1980 to today are collected: passing in front of the single-seaters, a computerized lighting system turns on the lights on the car to which the sultan approaches and at the same time a giant screen on the bottom projects television images of the car in the race.
The topic of “retirement” for former F1 glories is much debated by fans: should they be made to “live” while still on the track (with the obvious risk of destroying them) or placed under a glass bell jar to preserve them for future memory? Should they be protected by Cultural Heritage as works of art or left free to run?
Certainly seeing them still makes my heart cry. But even witnessing their mistreatment on the track – often by Sunday drivers – hurts the heart just as much. Yes, because almost always very high economic skills do not coincide with driving skills.
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