Gabriele starts threading needles about 100km into the stage.
Tucked tight into the convoy of team cars sitting just behind the breakaway on a winding road barely 15ft wide, he accelerates towards a gap that doesn't exist and shows no mercy.
The road swings sharply left just as we draw level with the Tinkoff car and a collision seems so inevitable that I stamp on an imaginary brake pedal and plant a vice-like grip on the door handle.
Tinkoff thankfully give way after my seemingly crazed driver bangs repeatedly on the horn, yet he still has to run off the road to get by and wing mirrors kiss as we squeeze past, sending gravel spitting up into the trees.
The process is repeated several nerve-shredding times over the next few minutes, until we're finally the first car in the convoy and are so close to the riders that I can see veins bulging out of their calves.
This is stage 10 of the 2016 Giro d'Italia and this is Giro Club, a VIP experience that takes you so deep into a bike race you feel like you're taking part.
It basically involves spending a day in a 4x4 that has right of way over everyone but the riders and is piloted by a driver I suspect is skilled enough to compete in the World Rally Championship.
The speeds and G forces we reach as Gabriele slaloms up, down and around the 219km from Campi Bisenzio, on the north-western outskirts of Florence, to Sestola, a ski town in the Appenine Mountains, bring back memories of childhood days on white-knuckle rollercoasters.
Several times I start feeling travel sick, but on each occasion nausea is drowned out by the adrenaline of a truly unique insight into the sport.
We had spent the early part of the stage watching the peloton tackle the category-three Passo della Collina, led up by the Etixx - Quick-Step team of race leader Gianluca Brambilla and the brilliant-blue wall of Vincenzo Nibali's Astana.
It's a warm day for May and apparently too warm for Team Sky's Mikel Landa, who picked up an illness overnight and is struggling.
"Rider No 181, Landa, is two minutes behind the peloton," crackles race radio, a live news service available to teams, race organisers and commentators, but not the public.
Half an hour later, we hear: "Rider No 181, Landa, has abandoned." One of the race favourites is out, but the Giro rolls on, and after a long battle, a 13-man breakaway at last moves clear.
We stay with the peloton until the escape has a lead of more than three minutes, at which point Gabriele speeds ahead and frightens the life out of me with his fearless overtaking of team cars.
When we're finally behind the breakaway riders, the difficulty of this beautiful but brutally hilly stage becomes apparent.
Bardiani-CSF's Nicola Boem, who coincidentally won stage 10 of last year's Giro, cannot hack the terrain and is dropped, flashing me a glance of agony and exhaustion as we leave him behind.
Next to fall away is Lampre-Merida's Przemyslaw Niemiec, who played a key role in initiating the breakaway but is now suffering.
I've had many long days in the mountains on a bike, but seeing every kilometre of this route and sampling every undulation - even from the comfort of a car - gives me new-found appreciation of how awesome these athletes really are.
Back down the road, the peloton is gradually being obliterated into small groups and so Gabriele parks up on a climb for us to wait and watch them pass.
By now the day is 170km old, yet the front group flies past at an incomprehensible speed. I can pick out Brambilla's maglia rosa, Nibali's Italian national champion's jersey, the huge shoulders of Steven Kruijswijk and tiny frame of Domenico Pozzovivo, but they're going far too fast to spot anyone else.
Behind them is a different scene. Multiple groups file past at half the speed and it's easy to identify the main sprinters' grupetto thanks to the presence of Andre Greipel.
A subsequent group ambles upwards so slowly that I could easily jog alongside them for 50m or so. They're clearly saving energy for the 11 days still to come.
After the last rider passes, we re-overtake everyone and make our way to the finish line to await the breakaway, who are now guaranteed to take the stage win.
Out of the distance appears the little-known, first-year Italian professional Giulio Ciccone, who has dropped all of his fellow escapees and wins by 42 seconds.
The race favourites follow just over two minutes later, with Nibali and Kruijswijk arriving four seconds behind Alejandro Valverde and Esteban Chaves. Brambilla isn't there and passes the pink jersey on to his team-mate Bob Jungels.
Tomorrow the riders and organisers will do it all again, while I'll return to covering the race from a television screen. My appreciation of the Giro, and cycling as a whole, however, is now very different.
Find further information about Giro Club for next edition of the Giro d'Italia here.