BETWEEN THRILLS AND TRANQUILITY
PISTA & PILOTI HILLCLIMB 2024
29 April 2024 • Written By Daniela Bay
Pista e Piloti was created in 2015 by the founder of events and classic cars services company Appia, German entrepreneur and car enthusiast Marco Wimmer. The premiere took place on the grounds of the Klassikstadt Frankfurt and the formula clicked right away, proving its worth over almost a decade.
The concept sounds deceivably simple. A weekend of racing with friends. A meet where you can take your car, and perhaps your friendships too, to the very edge. So it was with great pleasure that I headed to the Pferdsfeld race track in western Germany to witness the 2024 Pista & Piloti hillclimb event.
It’s a course I am rather familiar with, having tackled it myself, behind the wheel of a Giulia GTAm a couple of years ago. It’s a short dash up the hill and most competitors get to the top in about one minute and forty seconds. It’s not a feat of extreme endurance for the cars and perhaps this is one layer that adds to the general appeal of the event. Not risking any major damage to your pride-and-joy can be a major incentive to bring some of the best toys out to play. And one look at the entrants emphatically confirms this must have worked. Gracing the paddock is nothing less but a gorgeous 33 Stradale.
Italian engineer Paulo Garella’s company, M.A.T. is behind this creation, that may look like an original from 1967, but is likely capable of going a lot faster. Created using Tuscan designer Franco Scaglione’s original drawings, it went through a process of under-the-skin modernisation using cutting edge technologies, resulting in a bespoke chassis dressed in hand-beaten aluminium panels that were assembled using only traditional carozzeria methods. Motivation comes in the way of a carbureted Montreal-derived 2.6 DOHC V8, an engine closely related to the original’s race-bred, fire-breathing 2.0 V8.
