As you approach St. Moritz from the south via car, the vast frozen lake adjoining the town, St. Moritzersee, reveals itself—first dotted by small groups of people ice-fishing and cross-country skiing, and then, rounding the final corner, by a large crowd of people gathered around scores of rare and vintage cars, airplanes, and the occasional helicopter. A hot-air balloon is about to launch, but first, six fighter jets in a tight formation—the Patrouille Suisse, the aerobatics team of the Swiss Air Force—scream across the sky performing wild, look-at-me loops, dives, and climbs.
Down on the ice—or I.C.E., as the unfortunate acronym goes (here, it stands for the International Concours of Elegance, an annual convergence of the world’s notable car collectsors and high-end car brands), the look-at-me vibe also roars loudly. On this particular weekend in St. Moritz, one feels almost foolish not draping oneself in cashmere from head to toe, and not submitting to some throttle therapy behind the wheel of a large automobile.
I have come to town to drive a small fleet of vintage Ferraris on a specially constructed racetrack out on the ice of that lake as part of the marque’s legendary driving school, known as the Corso Pilota Classiche. But that’s tomorrow. Today, I sneak past an armada of sable and Sorel boots hopping into G-Wagons at the exit of my lodgings at the stately Carlton Hotel, and head up the hill—on foot, if you can believe it—for a short walk to the Vito Schnabel Gallery on Via Maistra, the chic main drag of St. Moritz. (While the glittering parts of this jewel-box ski town—think Downhill Racer, but directed by Wes Anderson, or St. Barths with snow instead of sand—all seem to be laid out in close proximity, walking a distance longer than, say, from fondue chalet to cozy-fireplace bar seems to be alien territory.)
There’s an exhibition of Ron Gorchov’s large, curved, brightly colorful canvases that’s really enjoying the pride of place at the gallery, but I came to spend some time with the more modest and idiosyncratic pieces from the late poet, artist, actor, critic, and firebrand Rene Ricard, grouped in the exhibition Rene Ricard: and if you arrive, do you know you are there? The canvases, given ample space under low-vaulted ceilings, seem imbued with a kind of peace that belies both their creation and their creator’s turbulent life—and, frankly, contemplating the gulf between that life and work and the bustling world outside this gallery’s doors is enough to send me back onto the street for some alpine air.
At the pop-up Casa Ferrari (taking the space of what’s normally the Kulm Country Club for the weekend), just down the street, there’s a DJ and more eye-popping street style. Honestly, I’d seen photos of the distinctly haute-Tyrolean vibe, replete with blazers fastened with geweihknopfe, or antler buttons, before I came here—the book St. Moritz Chic is a fantastic introduction—but I’d somehow assumed that the look was more photo-shoot confection than vernacular reality. I realized that I was vastly wrong about this just as Lapo Elkann rushed by me in an immaculate windowpane tweed suit, and I followed him outside to Casa Ferrari’s patio, where the assorted crowd was taking in a breathtaking pairs ice-skating performance on the rink, backdropped by Carsten Höller’s Pink Mirror Carousel.
The official I.C.E. gala at Badrutt’s Palace on Saturday night was much the same in terms of the such-muchness of it all, this time set to the soundtrack of a live jazz band. And if you haven’t lived to see a joyously tipsy fancy-dress crowd rush the dance floor after hearing the opening strains of a Sade song, well… you haven’t lived. But when an odd smell—smoky, but something different to it—began to drift through the crowd, my new friend and fellow Corso Classiche driver Henry noted, simply and accurately: “It smells like burning cashmere.” It seemed like the right time to call it a night.
The next morning, though, was when the real action on the real ice—the frozen lake just below the town of St. Moritz—began, as a fleet of five pristine vintage Ferraris awaited a dozen or so of us who’d made the pilgrimage: a V12 365 GTB4 (aka the Daytona) from 1968 in robin’s egg blue; two different 308s from the 1970s; a 1980 Mondial; and what I soon learned was the wild, bucking bronco of the armada, a 550 Maranello.
We stayed warm inside the shelter of Ferrari’s pop-up clubhouse, fortified ourselves with espresso, and learned about the course which had been laid out on the ice for us. We were treated to a crash course in the art and science of drifting around the corners. (In short: you brake, you turn into the corner, and when the rear of your car starts sliding around the corner, you hit the gas, and you countersteer—or “steer into the skid,” as so many Americans have learned the concept. Simple, right?) Finally, we were strongly encouraged to listen to the Ferrari Corso Classiche instructor who’d be riding shotgun with each of us, lest bad things happen.
Rolling out on the course for the first time in the Daytona, I was at first merely relieved to have not grinded gears or stalled out with the manual transmission in front of what seemed to be a relentlessly capable crowd. Rounding the course and gathering speed, though, things seemed remarkably—well, not easy, exactly, but not apocalyptic, either. Only later, over lunch back in town at Casa Ferrari, was it explained to me exactly why: Take away the extreme-speed factor that complicates so much performance driving—we were only going 40 or 60 mph on the ice, not 140 or 160—and there’s great fun and great learning to be had with minimal risk.
What success I had—whatever speed, whatever in the way of executing drifts and turns that, if not exactly perfect, nonetheless delivered the desired effect—out on that frozen lake I ascribe entirely to the entreaties of my passenger-seat instructor, Alberto, who’d been teaching driving with Ferrari for somewhere north of 40 years. Variously encouraging, praising, warning, politely scolding, and pants-on-fire big-trouble-soon-come ringing the alarm of imminent disaster, Alberto kept me honest and kept us both in one piece.
The soundtrack to navigating a single corner: “To the left, yes, more left, more left, watch the snow drifts there, a bit more right, yes, yes, now brake brake brake, yes, now turn turn turn, not too much, now wait, wait, wait, wait, yes gas gas gas gas more gas more gas okay enough whoah now countersteer! Countersteer! Get back! Countersteer! Too much! Ah... [enormous exhale] bravo, bravo, bravo.”
We raced each other in circles around the ice until the sun started to dip beneath the mountains that surrounded us, switching cars every session. I found the Mondial easiest to drive, the Maranello essentially untameable, and the Daytona a challenge, but a joy to try to master. The experience, though, of driving each of them—and, improbably, all of them? The entire day was suffused with adrenaline, euphoria, and a surreal and almost goofy, wide-eyed kind of awe.
At the end of the day, we said reluctant goodbyes to the fleet. We returned to the Carlton for naps, drinks, saunas, and swims (I forewent the first two to better squeeze in the last two), then we gathered one last time to ride the funicular up to the top of the Corviglia, St. Moritz’s home mountain, for a high-flying, high-altitude sendoff dinner at the White Marmot. Prizes were awarded: As part of the on-ice festivities, we all raced a kind of time trial circuit around a series of cones on the ice. While I ran one heat that seemed destined for a podium finish, if not a winner’s trophy, a single burst of acceleration at the wrong time close to the finish sent me flying (gently enough) into a snowbank at the side of the course, dashing all hopes.
After dinner, riding the funicular back down to town, I had every intention of making my way over and into the renowned Dracula Club, where I’d no doubt spend my last hours in St. Moritz toasting to the weekend’s rousing success amidst an assorted crowd of sporting playboys, gilded aesthetes, gentleman-racers, and other assorted alpine overlords (and a crowd of women single-handedly propping up the markets for sable, ermine, and diamonds). Instead, I crawled into my bed and dreamed of horsepower.
