Date line: ROME
Formula One World Champion Michael Schumacher will pit his speed
against a supersonic jet fighter screaming down the runway at an
Italian airbase next month, Italian Air Force officials told AFP.

Schumacher, at the wheel of the Ferrari 2003-GA in which he won the
world championship for a record sixth time last month, will try to
outstrip the new Eurofighter Typhoon hunter-bomber over a series of
short courses.

"We expect to have three races, over 500, 1,000 and 1,500 metres,"
Lieutenant Alessio Della Volpe told AFP by phone from Grosseto
military airport in Tuscany, where the race takes place on December
11.

"There will also be an exhibition of vintage cars and planes before
the race, then a public demonstration of the new plane," developed in
Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Italian astronaut and test pilot Maurizio Chelli will be at the
controls of the Eurofighter when it pairs off on the "grid" with
Schumacher, Della Volpe said.

Italy, home of style and fast cars, has seen it all before.

In 1931, Italian motor racing legend Tazio Nuvolari, at the wheel of
his Alfa Romeo 2300, was beaten by a biplane at Rome's airport.

But in 1981, Canada's Gilles Villeneuve and his Ferrari 126 CK turbo
beat a F-104 jet fighter over a kilometre (two-thirds of a mile) at
Istrana airport in northern Italy.





Should be interesting. Hopefully the video clip will be out there to
find. I've got the one from Ripley's where an F-16 took on the latest
and greatest, top of the line, Dodge Viper. The Viper (car) won to
the quarter mile mark but the F-16 overtook it and won to the half
mile mark. (I think a clean, low fuel load -229 F-15E might beat it
in the quarter though IMHO). I've also got a clip of a Hornet getting
it's ass handed to it by a Formula 1 race car (what were they
thinking) and I've seen a clip of a Mig-29 getting beat by what looked
like a teenager's muscle car. No a REAL muscle car not today's rice
burner wannabees. Looked like a jacked up in the back Nova with the
big wide tires on the back.