[Perfectlap]

The "road back" for Ferrari is more than a decade long, I recall an interview with Luca Montemozolo(Sp?) who is retiring as the Ferrari chief and possibly pursuing politics. Luca said that when he first started spear heading the revival of the company in the early 90's he noticed that the quality control department(the guys that fixed the assembly line errors) at the Ferrari factory was almost a big at the production area itself! I think he said they brought in the Japanese like the Porsche dudes did and quickly identified the weak spots. No doubt this thinking carried over to the motorsports teams resulting in some of the near bullet proof cars they have competed with since about 2000-2001. Now Renault seems to be doing similar. But Ferrari really stands alone in the amounts of money spend on racing. Nearly half of all their 05 REVENUES not earnings, went into those two little F1 cars, half a BILLION dollars. I can't think of another car builder that puts out this type of committment. Ford pulled the plug on many of Jaguar racing teams because they spent more trying to catch up with Luca then they did in all of their global motorsports combined. Better stick to NASCAR they figured. Cheap thrills for lots of sponsor dollars, but no big improvement in the road cars like Ferrari.

anyhoo... Who would have ever thought that the French and Italians would be showing the way to Japanese and Brits.
THe 2007 FIA GT races are going to be big for Porsche this season. I don't think they can afford to get drilled again in Europe and get spanked by the Z06's here in the U.S.
Racing cred is important if you expect to sell sports cars with a long term view.
Otherwise you're just selling heavy, very expensive pretty GT's.