Road & Track's relationship with Richard Losee goes back
many years and covers a variety of cars belonging to him and his father,
including our long-term test of his Ferrari Enzo. R&T called Losee and
asked if he would allow us to do a road
test with his new supercar in 2003, as Ferrari had made it clear that
this very limited-production model would not be available for the usual testing
procedures. Losee enthusiastically agreed. As a result of his generosity, we
sent our crew to Losee's home in Utah to do the testing and photography for our
July 2003 issue. And what a crew we sent: Ferrari World Drivers Champion Phil
Hill, a long-time associate of R&T; photographer John Lamm, Design Director
Richard Baron and Road Test Editor Patrick Hong. The test was fabulous—as was
the Enzo—and some several days later our crew traveled from Utah to Nevada and
into Southern California for the performance testing, accumulating some 1500
miles on Losee's new Ferrari, and setting multiple R&T test records.
Shortly thereafter, Losee talked to us about the endeavor of
his putting many, many miles on the Enzo and we collaborated on the idea of
making it an R&T Long-Term Test. As he told me during that
discussion, "My father told me when I was a youth, `If a man is fortunate
enough to have the means, he should drive a Ferrari.' And while he collected a
variety of cars in those days, we always had Ferraris in the garage."
I agreed to Losee's offer and he even got a Utah license
plate that read "MM ENZO"—with the MM standing for Most Miles. Within
a few years, he managed to accumulate more than 31,000 miles on the Enzo, as it
seemed to show up at Ferrari events and charity functions all over the West.
Losee was having a lot of fun, and he was demonstrating his
skills behind the wheel—after all, he had been the SCCA's Group 2 National Pro
Rally Champion in 1997. So it was no surprise that he, along with navigator
Sean Harris of Steve Harris Imports (the authorized Ferrari dealer in Salt Lake
City), snagged two wins in the newly created Ferrari Challenge Rally
competitions.
In the summer of 2006, disaster struck. Losee was
participating in the Utah Highway Patrol's Fast Pass charity event. This is a
3-day drive for limited-production cars on Utah's most scenic roads to benefit
families of injured or killed Patrol officers, as well as small cities and
students throughout rural Utah. The final day's headline event was a high-speed
run over a closed 14-mile stretch of road, with no-points "citations"
given for highest speeds to raise money. Unfortunately, there was no pre-run of
the course, and Losee had his Enzo up to 206 mph when he encountered a
whoop-de-doo stretch of the road. The car went airborne. He recalls a big
slide, a thought that this was not good, and that's all.
The incident made the front page of The Wall Street Journal.
The Enzo Ferrari was demolished, with pieces strewn over a quarter mile of Utah
landscape. Losee remembers but a few seconds of the ride in the life-flight to
the hospital. His injuries were major and included multiple broken bones,
including two vertebrae in his neck, that kept him in the hands of a
neurosurgeon for the next 12 months. Losee credits Ferrari for safety
engineering of the Enzo (and his full-face helmet) that allowed him to survive
this horrendous crash.
As the recovery time went by, he began to think about what
to do with the Enzo. Eventually he discussed it with his wife, Boni, and told
her he was thinking of rebuilding the car, and making it faster and stronger
than it had been. She knew Losee needed to do this and quietly said, "It's
okay—go ahead." During that recovery period, Losee also spoke with me
about the concept, and I assured him that Road & Track would want
to be involved with the story all the way through this miraculous
reconstruction.
"I knew this was personal," Losee admits. "I
consider myself a purist and I was putting back together a wrecked Ferrari with
a story of disaster, and Ferrari automobiles don't typically do well with
stories and wrecks. But I truthfully didn't care, because it was my car, we had
a tremendous amount of history together...it meant something to me."
So it was with the help of Sean Harris, who agreed to devote
his chief technician Randy Felice to the project, that Losee set out to
resurrect the Ferrari Enzo. All of the pieces had been stored at Miller
Motorsports Park in Utah for about 18 months. With the help of Felice and
restoration expert Kevin Marsh, they went through all the parts and pieces, and
then aided by Ferrari North America, began to order what was needed to complete
the rebuild—which took some 30 months.
The next step was the increased power and that's where
turbocharging guru Shane Tecklenburg of Mission Viejo, California, came into
the picture. Losee explains, "Ferrari had established the use of twin turbos
before on the 288 GTO and the F40, and I felt with the resurrected car having
been mostly destroyed, that even Enzo himself would not have minded that I
added twin turbos to this storied car to go after a land speed record in my
backyard at Bonneville."
Thus RSL Racing was created to go for the speed record, and
the team headed out to the Salt Flats in August 2010 for the SCTA Speed Week.
This was a time for licensing, trying different configurations and learning as
much as possible from the veterans of the Salt Flats. And it was a time when
Losee spun the Enzo at about 195 mph—and realized he and his team had a lot to
learn about the salt, including scrub radius, alignment, correct tires and Salt
Flat-specific driving skills. "The great thing was the advice and coaching
that came from some of the other competitors and the SCTA officials—people who
had been dealing with the Salt Flats for many years. And one veteran driver in
particular gave me the best advice after the spin—`Don't try to correct the wandering
the car does on the salt, just think it back into the groove.'"
After exploring a different nose piece and a modified gear
in the transmission, Losee and his crew decided to put the Enzo back into stock
form (except for the Salt Flat tires and wheels, the SCTA-required safety
equipment and, of course, the twin turbos) "and we felt it was capable of
breaking the class record."
October came and the SCTA again was ready to oversee
attempts to set new land speed records. On October 10, a news release went out:
"Team RSL Racing based out of Salt Lake City, Utah, took its Steve Harris
Imports and Miller Motorsports Park-sponsored Ferrari Enzo to a new Southern
California Timing Association World Land Speed Record of 237.871 mph Saturday
at the Bonneville Salt Flats. The new record was set using the average of the
qualifying speed of 237.600 mph and the record run of 238.142 mph, as per SCTA
rules."
As smoothly as the above reads, it was nothing like that on
the Salt Flats. Thursday afternoon the Enzo had set a qualifying speed of
221.316 mph on the down run to qualify for a record run. But early Friday
morning during the record attempt and after waiting out the effects from the
heavy rains of the night before, the drag chute unexpectedly deployed and
ruined that chance for the record. In the meantime, another team going after
the "C (360-cu.-in.) Blown Fuel Modified Sport" category record had
raised the bar from the 213.316 record to a new figure of 231.804 mph.
"We were disappointed that we were unable to set the
record because the chute fell out," said Tecklenburg, "and we were
ready to load up, thinking we didn't really have a shot at a speed that high
because we were out of gear using the stock drivetrain in the Enzo. But after a
few calculations we determined that we might be able to get there by raising
the factory rpm limit and dialing up the moderate turbo boost to 847 bhp."
Saturday morning dawned beautiful and wind-free, and RSL
Racing was ready to give it another shot—yet unbelievably, at approximately 225
mph, the drag chute again deployed prematurely! But after that frustrating run,
Richard was even more convinced the Enzo was strong enough to set the record,
so the team quickly repacked the chute and towed the car back to the staging
lanes, where it was the second to last car before the close of qualifying.
And then, as the last car to run at the 2010 SCTA World
Finals, the Enzo Ferrari went 238.142 mph with an exit speed of 238.780, making
it not just the record holder for its category, but also the fastest Ferrari
ever.
Throughout the two and a half years of rebuilding the Enzo
and getting it ready for the Bonneville Salt Flats, Losee says he knew in his
heart he had to attempt this. And as the restoration was being finished, Losee
partially straightened the severely bent MM ENZO Utah license plate and it was
again bolted to the Ferrari. "I felt that I had been blindsided by the
accident in the Enzo. And I lost some of my confidence and, frankly, some of my
pride as a result of a crash that occurred by my irresponsibly failing to
insist that I pre-drive the Utah Fast Pass high-speed course. Then, as I
completed the Bonneville record run and knew we had set a new mark for the
class, a calming sense of peace started to come over me. It was really nothing
earthshaking, it was simply a speed record in a sports-car category, but I had
needed to get back on that Prancing Horse. It made me realize that I had come
to terms with an unplanned and unpleasant detour in my life, had journeyed
through the long process of coming back from a terrible incident, and now I was
going to be okay with myself again."
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