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Berger and Vettel swap F1 cars old and new at the Red Bull Ring

This weekend the Formula One circus heads to Spielberg. No, not the Hollywood director, but the town in Austria that's home to the Österreichring. Subsequently known as the A1-Ring, these days it's called the Red Bull Ring, which makes this weekend's revived Austrian Grand Prix something of a home race for the defending champion Red Bull Racing team. But long before that it was the home race of the sixteen F1 drivers that call Austria their home - not the least of them Gerhard Berger.
The only Austrian driver to have won a grand prix (ten of them, all told) but not a championship, Berger was a fixture of F1 racing in the 1980s and 90s, spending much of his career driving for Ferrari. He later ran Scuderia Toro Rosso for three seasons, during which time Sebastian Vettel won his first (and still the team's only) grand prix. So with the Austrian Grand Prix back on the calendar for this weekend, the two highly accomplished drivers headed to the Red Bull Ring for a little juxtaposition.
Gerhard rolled in with the Ferrari F1/87-88C in which he won the 1988 Italian Grand Prix at Monza (which was, incidentally, the same race that Vettel won for STR twenty years later under Ferrari power), and Seb in his championship-winning RB8. Then they switched off, giving the four-time world champion his first chance to drive a grand prix racer with three pedals. If you can't believe that, it's also (as far as we can tell) the first time, despite years of neck-and-neck competition and retention of some of the best drivers on the grid, that a Red Bull or Toro Rosso driver has driven a Ferrari F1 car, and vice versa. See how it went down in the video below.

What I learned after 5,600 miles in a Ferrari F355 Spider

I'm paraphrasing, but Autoblog reader Paul Dyer asked me one day, "Want to drive my 1998 Ferrari F355 Spider from San Jose, California, to me in Newfoundland?" I'm also paraphrasing and leaving out some colorful but unpublishable language, but essentially I said, "Yes." That's how I ended up on a two-week, 5,600-mile road trip, getting an extensive and intimate look at one of the most spectacular cars of our generation. Here's what I discovered. To paraphrase, you don't even know how badly you want an F355. The F355 Spider is the last beautiful Ferrari. Subsequent stallions are modern and dramatic, the F355 is eternally gorgeous, like Brunelleschi's doors and sunsets in Viareggio. The Iliad would still make sense if you said the Greeks took to ship after a Trojan keyed Menelaus' F355. You cannot say the same about the 348, or even the 458 (though we do love it so). This car began the era in which mid-engined Ferraris sell out for years in advance. That said, F355 upkeep is the equivalent of giving your bank account a flesh-eating disease. This car's most recent engine-out service was $28,000: $12,000 in labor, $16,000 in parts. Dropping the Propulsore Completo is recommended every three years for routine service and runs $7,000 or more if no other work is required. Gooey valve guides, melting exhaust manifolds, and cranky seat sensors are among the fickle components that will guarantee the bill will exceed that amount. A single bolt is $45. One F355 owner, asked if he'd recommend the model, replied without hesitation "Absolutely not." But the F355 began a whole new game for The Prancing Horse. One of Luca de Montezemolo's first marks on the company as president, the F355 was intended to rectify the sins of the 348 and deal with the Acura NSX. The F355's design resulted from 1,800 wind tunnel hours. It introduced Ferrari's five-valve V8 engine – at 107.3-horsepower-per-liter, the highest specific output of any naturally aspirated car at the time. It had an 8,500-rpm redline. The engine was so important that Ferrari changed its naming convention to highlight it. The F355 introduced a six-speed manual transmission to the V8 range. It introduced the paddle-shifted sequential gearboxes to consumers, previously the purview of top-tier race cars. This Spider was the brand's first semi-automatic droptop. This car began the era in which mid-engined Ferraris sell out for years in advance. Some of the trademark features take getting used to.

Ferrari-Maserati dealer folds in Las Vegas casino

The ten-year-old Penske Ferrari Maserati dealership located inside the Wynn resort in Las Vegas, where non-Ferrari owners had to pay $10 to walk among the cars, is closed. Word is that the Ferrari franchise is moving to Towbin Motorcars, which you'll know for being the home of the former "King of Cars," and more recently where Floyd "Money" Mayweather has bought 100 cars, including three Bugatti Veyrons. According to Ferrari Chat almost the entire Penske-Wynn staff will make the move, including the highly regarded service department. This being Las Vegas there are, naturally, various theories about why the only Ferrari franchise in the state of Nevada is leaving one of the state's marquee locations. We got a tip a month ago from reader Johnny Autos that Ferrari pulled the franchise, and if there is any truth to that, rumors at Ferrari Chat suggest it part of the reason could have been Steve Wynn flipping his LaFerrari before the 18-month no-sale period had elapsed. Wynn supposedly sold his $1.5 million supercar to Naples Motorsports in Florida for $3.5 million, Naples is asking $5 million for it and using it for the elementary school run in the meantime. On the other hand, Vegas Tripping says Wynn is letting the dealership go in order to get ready for the Alon – another casino – to open across the street in three years. That story believes Wynn will build a pedestrian bridge and rearrange shops on the Wynn side so that customers enjoy the kind of grand entry he would want. And then there's the theory that Penske is getting out of the Ferrari dealership business to focus on commercial trucks. No matter where the truth is in all of this, what matters to you is that you won't be able to spend $10 to check out Ferraris on the strip anymore. Which means more money for the penny slots.