Once upon a time, at Monza, the driveway that led to the gate of the track. The driveway is still there (although it looks like the entrance to Alcatraz), what is missing is the gate.
The gate keeper was a grumpy guy, he looked at you and always seemed pissed off. Like the gate, he stayed there for years and years, an institution, then together with the gate and the surrounding towers (ugly but which were a piece of history) he was swept away.
As I said, the caretaker was rude and gruff, but we called him Saint Peter because he was the one who opened the gate to you when we decided to make a run on the track with our everyday car. We stopped the car next to it, rigorously with the engine running, and went to the Management office to deliver the driving license and sign the liability discharge form, in which we committed ourselves to pay the tow truck and all the damage caused to the circuit in case of accident.
Ah yes, the engine was left on because at that time almost all cars had cast iron cylinders and alloy pistons and heads. Two different thermal expansion coefficients: it is no coincidence that the greater number of seizures on the motorway took place a couple of kilometers after the Autogrill. And yes, in those years one could still seize.
Well, I was talking of Saint Peter. If at the hundredth and one time you met him he would speak to you, it meant that he no longer considered you an intruder, one who went there to try something different just to waste time, but he understood that there was some passion. Then you discovered a totally different person: a strange hermit or poet who lived his whole life at the gates of Paradise, opening the door to the drivers and drawing passion from their passion.
"All heroes, those who go in there are all heroes! Listen, listen to Luigi (Colzani). He always pulls like a beast, whatever he has under his ass, always gives his best. I saw him with the GTA, with the RS, even with the 128 and next year he’s going with the sportscars. Imagine, with the Alfone (the 2600 Sprint) he kept up with the GTAs: sometimes he takes the Curvone flat, sometimes I bring him back with the tow truck." And twisted his mustache into what for him was a laugh. [perhaps it’s the other way around, the GTAs kept up with the big Alfas - my note]
"Listen to this!" ,and I prick up my ears: a Formula Monza is passing, a "spetecchina". [LOL]
"Listen now how he downshifts to enter the Junior!", and I listen [the Junior track].
"This one is good. This one will go far!"
Then he turns around, gets inside and closes the gate. Yes, because with him we always spoke there on the threshold: he inside and you outside.
I spend some time smoking a cigarette. The gate opens, and the small car comes out. He wants to turn left where there are the old pits, those paved with porphyry cubes taken from the two Curvette when they were replaced by the Parabolica. He tries, but I am in the middle and then stops: he has the helmet on his lap, hair wavy and long, eyes lively and sincere.
"Sorry" I say, and he smiles.
"What's your name?"
"Michele".
"Michele and then?"
"Alboreto, Michele Alboreto. Why?"
"Saint Peter says you will become someone."
He smiles, I step aside, and he restarts with that little twin-cylinder sound.
