Driving a Ferrari at Toronto Motorsports Park

Daniel Demaras is a lifelong Ferrari fan. No matter how the F1 season is going, there’s only one team he cheers for. He’s what you call Tifosi.

With Ontario moving ahead to Stage 3 in the ‘Road to Recovery’ places like Toronto Motorsports Park at Cayuga are re-opening to offer exotic car ‘thrill rides’ to speed freaks like the Demaras family. Chris and Daniel were there on Day 1!

The team at TMP are extremely friendly and made the Demaras duo feel right at home, playfully teasing by asking if they wanted to drive the Porsche instead of the Ferrari.

After s driver’s briefing to help everyone understand how to operate the paddle-shifters, what rev range to keep the cars within and the rules of the road, the participants headed out on track.

For Daniel, the sight of a ‘rosso corsa’ red Ferrari F430 in the parking lot brought childhood memories rushing back; he’d be driving the same car as Michael Schumacher’s cameo appearance in Pixar’s Cars movie.

Technically speaking, Daniel doesn’t have a driver’s license. He’s been racing karts since he was little, and he’s driven his mom’s Mini Cooper S, but only has a learner’s permit. Since the track is a closed course, Daniel’s G2 was sufficient. Young Demaras jumped into the Ferrari’s driver seat ready to hit the track under the guidance of his TMP instructor Chris in the passenger seat.

Pushing the big red button, Daniel fired up the Italian V8, engaged first gear, then headed out on track. At Chris’ instruction, Daniel gave it full throttle and accelerated along the pit lane, grabbing gears at redline as the speedometer approached 200 km/h.

Daniel hammered out 10 laps in the Ferrari. Afterwards he commented that more surprising than the power from the Italian supercar was the amount of grip the car can produce in the corners. The drive was just astounding.

Once father and son had taken their turns at the wheel of the F430, Daniel was already asking when he could come back to Toronto Motorsports Park to drive their F-2000 car in anger…and maybe even a few more laps in the Ferrari.