ferrari nurburgring

The Nürburgring has become an absolute Mecca for automotive enthusiasts and racing fans across Europe and around the world. Setting new 'Ring records has become a vaunted pursuit, and any automaker worth its bolts brings its latest sportscar prototypes to test there. Among those marques is Ferrari, which in addition to three racing circuits that the company owns and operates in Italy, comes to the Nürburgring for proper shakedowns. (Witness Schumacher's reported crash there in a 430 Scuderia prototype just last month as an example.)

Following yesterday's report that Michael Schumacher had crashed a prototype Ferrari 430 Scuderia on the Nurburgring, some things have come into focus, but little has become any clearer. Ferrari insists that, although Schumi had been driving the car that day, it was actually the factory's road car test driver Raffaele de Simone who was driving when the car hit the guardrail at 250 km/h. Photographs show that the 7-time world champion had been driving the car with his young son Mick - himself just starting out in karting - riding shotgun... with neither of them wearing helmets.