Palm Beach, 26th of January

One year after the big jubilee of the prestigious Cavallino Classic Concours weekend Cavallino 26 opened its doors at the Palm Beach International Raceway for the first of the two track days. Unfortunately with raising prices over the last decade the track activities during the weekend in Florida are getting less and less every year as only a few brave challenge the risk of racing a multimillion dollar car with likeminded. And as everywhere those brave are missed the more when they do not show up anymore leaving a gap that cannot be easily filled as seen today on the first day. Usually both Ed Davies and Tom Price usually bring several cars to be driven in the pre-war class as well as in the drum and disc brake challenges but unfortunately both were unable to attend the track leaving a rather thin field of classic Ferraris on the track.

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The practice of the drum brake race was put together with the pre-war cars where Jon Shirley was left alone in his stunning Alfa Romeo P3 to chase the Ferrari 250 GT Boano of Jim Fuchs, Jack Thomas as well as the 250 GT TdF of Charles Wegner.

The disc brake race was also thinned although the 2 512 BBLM of Fuchs and Morici still had to play with each other chasing themselves around the track in their annual private duel. Chris Cox on the other hand missed the two other 250 GTO of the above named leaving him alone with the choice of driving either the GT in the Swedish colors or the one-off 412MI, both of the really quick around the circuit.

After spending a few hours in the sun at the PBIR both the visitors and the entrants had the choice of either joining one of the private parties in the Palm Beach Area or heading towards the Palm Beach Airport for the annual Jet Aviation Center Party. Starting a little bit later this evening the Aviation Party usually brings together Ferrari of different eras with the latest private jets parked in front of the hangars looking for new owners. With some drinks of the various sponsors both the petrol heads as well as the Palm Beach society had plenty to talk about at a nice warm evening in Florida when both the north of the USA as well as Europe suffers really cold temperatures. After the cars being lined-up in front of the hangar the guests had the chance to vote for their favorite car and those more interested in the modern cars might have preferred a yellow LaFerrari but matching the historic concept of the Cavallino Magazine is finally was the blue Ferrari 330 GTS (chassis 09691) brought over by Matthew Ivanhoe that took the Coppa della Bella Macchina at the Jet Center.

Tomorrow will be the second of the track days and one can hope that maybe a few more cars will show up to join the party fighting for the trophies given out in the evening at the pool of the Breakers Hotel before the weekend starts with the both Concours at the Breakers and the property of the new president of the USA, the private club of Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago.

Report & images … Peter Singhof
www.ClassicCarPhotography.de