Twenty-one is a great number. It is the winning hand in Blackjack and the legal age at which you can buy and consume alcoholic beverages. Twenty-one also happened to be the number of Ferrari Challenge Stradales that assembled last year to set a new record for the most Stradales ever gathered in one place - but twenty-one is so last year. With the success of last year's event, Jon Johnson and Elliot Lim wanted to organize a new meet to honor the release of Maranello's most recent road-going racecar - the F430 Scuderia and Scuderia Spider 16M. What they achieved this year was the kind of thing that every fan of the Prancing Horse dreams of and attracted enthusiasts from all over Southern California (even one from New York who shipped his Scuderia out just for this event).
The peace of the early morning in Malibu was broken by the sound of high-strung Italian V8's approaching. One-by-one they entered the parking lot and pulled into their parking spaces - waves of heat emanating from their engine compartments. As the owners exited their cars to chat, a swarm of waiting photographers and videographers were drawn to the cars like .ies to honey. They descended on the stable of Italian thoroughbreds to study every angle of these awe-inspiring machines.
With the sun creeping up the sky, everyone realized it was time to move on to the driving portion of the day's festivities. After a short driver's meeting, everyone headed to their cars while the photographers snapped their last few shots of the morning. As if someone shouted the most famous words in racing ("Gentlemen. Start your engines!") - almost in unison, 176 cylinders roared to life in a near-deafening cacophony of reverberating sound. And as quickly as they arrived, the Ferraris vacated the lot, carefully negotiating the speed bumps, and made their way out to the Pacific Coast Highway.
