This is uncanny. Mid-engined supercars and wet weather are a notoriously disastrous combination, but the 597hp Ferrari 458 Speciale we’re in seems to be defying the laws of driving physics as we’ve come to know them.
We’re in Italy to get a taste of Ferrari’s third and latest road-going take on the incredible 458, and the weather is atrocious. It’s not so much the volume of rain falling as it is the fact that it hasn’t stopped since we were handed the keys to this US$290,000 (Dh1.065million) supercar, a map of the area and told to come back when a) we were hungry or b) we’d had enough. That was four hours ago. Food is the last thing on our minds.
Right now, attention is focused squarely on the snaking series of sodden hairpins that lie ahead, and the terrifying speed at which they can be taken in the Speciale. The roads are narrow, bumpy, off-camber and steep – a cocktail ripe for disaster in a car where most of the heavy bits sit behind you and the threat of losing either end of the car is a constant concern. To complicate matters, we’re driving in dense cloud cover, which offers up enough forward visibility to tempt the right foot, but would render us invisible to other road users should we embark on a little off-road excursion.
But this car sticks. The front-end grip is incredible, turn-in is precise and power delivery is sublime. It’s as though the car’s Michelin Pilot Sport Cup2 tyres and the tarmac around Maranello and the Emilia-Romagna region are magnetically attracted. It’s either that, or Ferrari has managed to secrete a small elephant somewhere under the bonnet to help nail the front end to the road. Its grip is absolutely sublime.
Ferrari says the Speciale is for the true driving enthusiast. It shifts faster, turns in quicker and stops far better than the current Italia. It’s an uncompromising car that puts more power and more control in the hands of the driver, and will flatter the novice and actually help talented drivers to become better. It’s designed to press all the right buttons in your pleasure centre while maintaining limits that far exceed the talents of most who will ever sit behind the wheel.
The centrepiece to this is a trick piece of software that Ferrari has developed called Side Slip Control (SSC). It’s an algorithm that monitors the car’s slip angle in real time, and allows the car to slide in a controllable power oversteer by working with the electronically controlled rear diff (E-diff) and the traction control (F1-Trac). Computers reduce the amount of locking torque on the diff during understeer, which helps loosen up the rear and get the nose pointed in to a bend. Traditional traction control systems would cut engine power at the first sign of oversteer, but the SSC lets you power out of a turn with the rear tyres lit in a controllable fashion. It’s not, Ferrari insists, designed to turn the 458 Speciale into a drift car, but an aid to help drivers safely explore the limits of adhesion. It’s chiefly designed to work on the track, where you can slide about in relative safety, but it has benefits for those who love to get out and blast about their favourite roads. In the wet. And right now, on these roads, it’s very apparent.
Ferrari may have struggled for pace in F1 this past season, but its road car department continues to hit unimaginable levels of performance. The 730hp F12berlinetta is one of the most impressive sportscars ever built, and the forthcoming 950hp LaFerrari hybrid supercar is set to raise the bar yet again when it launches next year. And now, this hard-core version of the 458 Italia has sent ripples around the sportscar world with its 597hp naturally aspirated engine and whole arsenal of active aerodynamics, chassis tweaks and bespoke tyres that are targeted at Ferrari’s more focused driving nuts.
These nuts are happy to forgo a few traditional luxuries in exchange for extra performance. Carpets? Fuggedaboudit. There’s not even a glovebox and, if you don’t like the symphony of the flat-plane crank V8 behind you, then you’re best spending your money elsewhere because there’s no stereo in the car to drown it out. This is a driving machine and anything not core to this has been left on the shelf.
The 458 Speciale follows in the footsteps of the 360 Challenge Stradale and F430 Scuderia as a more extreme version of Ferrari’s contemporary road car. Power has been boosted, weight trimmed, and the car jammed with as much new tech as the chassis engineers can shoe-horn into its compact dimensions without compromising its all-up weight. It shares many of the same lightweight technologies developed for the LaFerrari, and also gets many things you won’t see in the hyper-expensive Enzo-replacement. Marrying the best of the 458 Italia’s underlying engine and chassis footprint with the latest aerodynamic tech, lightweight components and engine tweaks make the Speciale one of the best Ferraris to have ever rolled out of Maranello.
The most obvious changes are to the exterior. It’s not just the North American Racing Team livery seen on racers in the 1950s and 60s, but the entire front end, side skirts and rear diffuser that have been tweaked. The 458 Speciale is the first in-series production car from Ferrari to be fitted with active aerodynamics. That includes two spring-loaded doors on either side of the prancing horse at the front that push open at more than 170kph to direct air across the face of the radiators – cutting drag – and through the two vertical turning vanes on either side of the car to help stability. A horizontal element in the front bumper extends at speeds above 220kph to balance downforce between the front and rear. At the back, Ferrari has moved the exhausts from the centre of the car to either side to create space for an enormous diffuser, which is fitted with three actuator-controlled flaps that open to reduce drag.
At the heart of every Ferrari is the highly-strung, high-revving, naturally-aspirated engine. The base unit is the same 4.5L V8 fitted to the Italia, but Ferrari’s engineers have made a series of detail changes to the internals to incrementally boost power and torque. There are new, shorter inlet tracts that are made from carbon fibre and help speed airflow into the engine, higher-lift cams that reduce pressure within the engine under load, and a sky-high compression ratio of 14:1. Engineers also cut internal friction in the engine by redesigning the pistons, coating the piston pins in a diamond-like carbon heat treatment process, and redesigning the con-rod bushings. The crankshaft was also altered to help improve lubrication of the main bearings, and a new aluminum exhaust was fitted to extract a little extra power and rasp from the engine. All up, Ferrari says it trimmed 8kgs out of the engine bay; no mean feat considering the Italia’s engine was already trimmed of fat. The result is a 35hp hike in power to 597hp (Ferrari states 605CV) at an ear-splitting 9,000rpm. Torque remains the same at 540 Nm.
That doesn’t sound like a lot considering the amount of effort that went into the two-year development programme, but the result is a car with the best specific power output of any road-going Ferrari V8 in history. It’s the first car to make 135hp per litre and, at just 1,395 kg with 597hp, it has the best power-to-weight ratio of any Ferrari V8 ever.
Ferrari claims gearshifts through the seven-speed, dual clutch transmission are faster than ever at just 6/100ths of a second, nearly three times quicker than the Enzo. It’s not a difficult claim to believe if you watch the rev counter and feel the surge forward every time a gear engages. Summon the courage to pin the throttle, and you’re welcomed with a sensory overload that plugs the 458 Italia into a stack of Marshall amplifiers and cranks the volume to 11. Five LEDs on top of the steering wheel light up as revs swing wildly towards the redline and the twin exhausts spit out a squall that only Ferrari could get away with. It’s such a visceral experience, even for those with a little race car experience.
Shaving 90kg has had a dramatic effect on handling. New resin-transfer moulded plastic bumpers and diffusers, thinner windshields and side glass, and a Lexan rear window have helped remove 13kg from the exterior; bespoke forged alloys and the Extreme Design brakes cribbed from the LaFerrari have cut unsprung masses by 13kg; 20kg was extracted from the interior by removing the carpets and replacing the tread plates with thinner metal. The door cards are carbon fibre, while the centre console with its extended bridge with pushbutton transmission controls has also been borrowed from the LaFerrari. Alcantara is lighter than leather, so it’s been used everywhere and stitched together with contrasting red thread. The seats are trimmed in Alcantara and a lightweight synthetic material Ferrari calls Sail-3D. There are two soft kneepads in place of the glovebox, and a bunch of nets and cubbyholes to store stuff around the cabin.
If you’re a proper hardcore track fan, the optional telemetry system is a must. You can download your track sessions onto a USB stick or plug your iPad into it and have a passenger monitor your session in real time. The seats are comfy but the four-point safety harnesses are a chore for everyday driving, and the wide belts cut into your shoulders. Once strapped in, your movements are limited too, which is fine if you’re driving, but not so much fun if you need to reach for something at your feet or on the parcel shelf behind.
But really this is a minor gripe on a car that delivers such a perfect balance of power, speed, on the limit handling and sublime driving experience. We’ve asked it before and we’ll ask it again: just how will Ferrari top this? Yet, somehow, we know it will – it’s one of life’s reassuring certainties.
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