A friend named it “a slowly dying event” – Ferrari-wise he is right. Since the Factory stopped the presence after the 2008-event, the number of Ferraris being present fell dramatically. 2004 to 2008 the number was around 300 cars (low 2006, 266 cars, high 2005, 369 cars). Since 2009, the first event that Ferrari Club Deutschland tried to keep the Prancing Horses together on their paddock, only a third of the previous number of cars showed up and remain static ever since (low 2009, 95 cars, high 2010, 163 cars – predominantly on Saturday, because it was raining cats and dogs on Sunday).
http://www.f-register.com/images/OGP.jpg
2013 joins in, a poor number of 99 cars have been spotted and the number of historic cars is declining dramatically. This year a 330 GT 2+2, a 365 GT 2+2 a Daytona and a 365 GTC/4, accompanied by three 246 Dinos represented the historic-section. Too little!
Causal research: We can offer some assumption. We can exclude Michael Schumacher’s departure from F1-Racing with the Scuderia as it was in 2007 already. His pure presence led to a mania in Germany and made followers of the Scuderia of many motorsport fans.
We have to ask ourselves, how deep the relationship may be between the Ferrari Club in Germany and its members, what the Club does to become attractive for Ferrari owners and what club members do to support their club and promote the brand? The Club has tried bravely to close the gap that occurred when Ferrari skipped Germany in their Marketing-Budget, an effort that cannot be rated high enough. On the other hand, the Club’s size never reflected the size of the German market share by sales. The British and Dutch clubs are examples for the opposite. A relative small number of members leave a small budget and that may be an explanation for what many visitors of this year’s OGP had the impression, that the Ferrari display was massively downsized. The Club shared a so called “VIP-lounge” above the pits with Maserati instead of having the usual tent close to the cars.
The mostly harmless interpretations may be the German Holiday season as well as the contemporary multiplicity of events - but, this is a frequent thing each year.
However, the Factory is famous for glamorous events and I have shared a few of them. Our hopes are focusing on the upcoming Racing Days, but the official dealers are provided with poor marketing efforts and Ferrari does not even offer an evening event on Saturday evening. Let’s hope for the best, that more owners are attracted to participate. It would be a shame if the event of a non-official workshop would be the highlight of the season – even if it was worth it, we will report.
PS: an Event Report of OGP will follow as well...