MASTERING MASERATI MAYHEM.

Byline: MATT DAVIS

Can it get much better than this for lovers of all things Latin? One or two days of controlled and purposeful foolery on the track down the road from Dallara, accompanied by thoroughly remarkable Romagnolo cuisine by night, plus the chance to get all chummy with drivers whose names you may know (lead instructor is 1992 Ferrari F1 driver and 2002 European GT champ Ivan Capelli).

We just put ourselves through the two-day version of the Maserati GT Master driving course at Autodromo Riccardo Paletti in Varano de' Melegari, Italy. Using 11 coupes and three spyders of both the GT and Cambiocorsa varieties, 24 students are divided into four groups of six and 10 instructors are assigned to lead. The first step is for the instructors to see your on-track bag of tricks, then you go through several safety and skills seminars and proceed to hotter and hotter laps. The primary goal is to become a better driver through loads of hands-on work and feedback. A secondary goal is to get the Maseratis to be the best cars they possibly can be in your hands, whether with Anti-Skid Regulation (ASR) on or off, and whether in Sport or Normal drive mode. Your driving stints are videotaped, and telemetry readouts are provided after each hot-lap session.

The center of attention is the 1.48-mile circuit-small but very sweet. There are 14 curves to execute and, no matter whether a hairpin or a fast S-turn, the instructors insist that the whole thing can be done best using just third and fourth gears, second being too short to give you any advantage and fifth being unattainable on this tight circuit. Given the fairly soft suspension setup as well, you discover a slightly different strategy for turns. Brake hard early, let up into the turn as you approach wider than you think is best, turn in smoothly, accelerate gradually out. No punching the accelerator ...