Scuderia Ferarri at Olympic opening ceremony
Fri Feb 10 16:23:06 2006 EST (-0500 GMT)This afternoon I watched what I thought was shaping up to be a more mundane opening ceremony than Athens: Opera and ballet and no flying land-forms or giant temporary lakes. But then I heard the greatest thing I’ve heard all week.
As the modern dancers left the stage out of the floor appeared the Scuderia Ferarri’s pit crew placing tires on an F1 car driven by test driver Luca Badoer. The car appears to be the 2005 F2005 chassis painted in Olympic colours.
The team lowered Luca down to the floor and he slowly drove the car out to the main stage, set the brake bias to the front and did a number of screaming doughnuts filling the stadium with sound and smoke. I think the whole segment of the ceremony lasted about a minute, but I was jumping up and down with the TV at full volume for the whole thing. It was capped off with a large fireworks display that ringed the stadium.
The T in FIAT stands for Torino. FIAT currently own Ferrari which is also based in Italy in Maranello.