‘On Days Like These’ – Time spent racing at the Audemars Piguet Gstaad Classic.

Anyone who has seen the opening scene to the Italian Job (1969 version) will know what it is to drive a classic car through the Alps. You might want to omit from your memories how (in the film) the drive ends, but the opening scenes of the Lamborghini Miura driving through the narrow mountain roads, the engine revving echoes through the mountain pass, and the standard cool look for the driver, captures the essence of the Audemars Piguet Gstaad Classic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpq1_AphUSY

A car rally of the imagination, high up over the world, in cars devoid of trip-tronic gear boxes, exhaust systems that are not specially designed to enhance the engine sound, and where braking systems were constructed out of milk bottle caps and chicken wire rather than electronically detectable skid patterns. Without such modern-age cushions for the senses, timing becomes everything, and driving is more FUN. When cars were mechanical masterpieces rather than an electronic box of tricks; cars were tuned, timed, and were designed by a personality, rather than a CAD program. Lamborghinis were the result of the man being fed-up with Enzo Ferraris reliability; Enzo and Sir William Lyons were still designing the cars; and David Brown was on a mission to develop race cars to win 24 Heures du Mans and challenge Ferrari.

Driving around the Alps, within a second you are between the mountain and the precipice of eternity (visible just outside your car window). For three days in early September, the AP Gstaad Classic is now a biennial event in the classic car racing calendar. A timed event over three days with set time loops over the mountain scenery starting and finishing from Gstaad. It really is an ideal setting and almost difficult to believe that a Rally around Gstaad did not exist previously. The last of the summer sun allows the cars to race in near perfect conditions, there are timed hill sprints, and timed stages through the mountains. The Grand Hotel in Gstaad plays host and the whole event radiates a certain throw back to a time when races were between drivers who owned their cars and thought nothing of jumping into the seat and driving at break-neck speed through the course.

For the inaugural event, there was an impressive array of vintage and near vintage cars from the marques we would expect at such an occasion. Aston Martin, Ferrari, Bentley, Jaguar and Porsche were there in numbers. There were two classes of drivers: drivers and co-drivers entered into the competition; and drivers there for a timed run and enjoying the scenery pass by.