FERRARI F8 SPIDER
The brilliant F8 Tributo has already given McLaren something to think about. Is its drop-top brother about to do the same?
AS YOU APPROACH THE LOW slither of Giallo Modena your eye is drawn to the sharp edges, deep creases and gaping aerodynamic apertures. The more discreet S-duct opening in the leading edge of the front bonnet creates a darker shadow across the nose of Ferrari’s latest offering, too. Then the deeply scalloped sides, with their elephant hoof-sized openings atop the rear arches, draw in your eye as you check for any small mammals that may have taken up residence the previous evening. You glance at the door handle, question why it looks like an afterthought, but give it no further consideration. The door swings open. Light, no resistance, providing the gateway to the most important seat in any new Ferrari: the driver’s.
There’s still some idiosyncratic Italian ergonomics going on once you’re parked inside. There’s too much of your legs on show, not as much cocooning as you’re perhaps expecting. But you’re low in the tub, legs outstretched, arms kinked in all the right places when your hands reach the wheel. Doubt I’ll ever be convinced by steering wheels with highly polished carbonfibre inserts; it’s all a bit ‘trying too hard’ for me. But it feels good to grip, thick but not BMW M thick, your palms resting on the leather, your fingers wrapped around it and your thumbs at ease on the edges. Thumb the start button. A whirr. A bark. A crack of revs. A Ferrari V8 has come to life.
A Ferrari twin-turbo V8 that, if you’ve arranged the credit facility to release the money required to have your name on the V5C, sits amidship in ‘your’ new F8 Spider. An open-top Ferrari that, when you first approach it with its roof closed, you would be forgiven by all but the design department in Maranello
for thinking it was a regular Tributo coupe. You need to look closely to see those two sections of roof and their shut lines that reveal the Spider’s identity along with the filled-in rear buttresses, which in profile give the Spider a little too much body and add unwanted visual weight.
Removing the roof of a modern-day supercar no longer results in a book of excuses to work around the shake, rattle and roll that tarnished the experience less than a decade ago. These machines are now conceived at the outset to be both fixed-head coupes and open-top roadsters. Their tubs are designed with the required structural integrity from the off, guaranteeing that a Spider differs very little dynamically, if at all, from its coupe cousin. It’s a strategy McLaren mastered from day one and Ferrari has caught up with in less than half a decade.
Roof open – slick and done in under 15 seconds, and more compact than that of the 488 when stowed – the F8 doesn’t deliver the aural enhancement you might perhaps have been expecting from both the V8 and the exhaust. At tickover, as you settle in and dial in your preferred settings on the Manettino, the engine’s note is a little thin and digital, as if it’s only being piped in through the speakers with the treble set to maximum and the bass wound down. Emissions regulations have a lot to answer for, but my learned colleague John Barker, who has already sampled the F8 Spider, says I should persevere, because this Ferrari requires a few revs and some provocation before it becomes a fully fledged tenor.
The world contracts very quickly if you allow the Spider off its leash
Dig deep enough into the F8’s DNA and the roots take you back to the 458 via the relatively short-lived 488, which is no bad thing considering both provided the platform for Ferrari’s mid-engined V8 family to flourish. In the F8 there’s a healthy mix of 488 GTB compliance, useability and, this feels strange to write when discussing a 710bhp, 770Nm mid-engined Ferrari, friendly nature. But it is also combined with a good measure of the feral focus introduced with the Pista.
During the early getting-to-know-you phase there’s certainly no sign of the Pista’s pentup aggression as the F8’s gearbox shuffles seamlessly in a bid to claim the record to reach the highest possible gear at the lowest possible speed. This isn’t why you buy a Ferrari.
Click, click, click. And one more click. Nope, still need one more to reach third. The tacho awakens, the lights embedded on top of the steering wheel illuminate, and the F8 turns to you and shouts: ‘Come on then, get on with it!’ Er, OK.
If it wasn’t for the huff and puff and noticeable sigh from the V8’s turbochargers as they spool up and spin down, releasing excess air as they do so, you’d be unaware of the engine’s form of aspiration. Ferrari’s turbocharged V8 has been, since its inception, a lag-free zone, responding in a manner you’d associate with a four-cylinder VTEC rather than eight-cylinder turbo. It’s harder still to comprehend when accompanied by a soundtrack of turbo hiss and fizz. What you are sure of is just how violent 710bhp feels in a car with no roof and a chassis that’s so confident in itself.
There’s not one thing that dominates or takes over the experience. Yes, there’s the sound of the air rushing over your head at a not inconsiderable rate of knots, but it’s not beating you up or trying to push your brain out of your nose because the air is being funnelled at supersonic speed down your ear canals. Roof down, road opening up ahead of you, the world contracts very quickly if you allow the Spider off its leash.
Acceleration is savage (100kmph arrives in the same 2.9sec as the coupe, with top speed also the same at 340kmph), of course it is, because over 500bhp per ton (dry) makes anything feel on another level to a machine that is merely quick. Yet it’s incredibly linear in how it harnesses that performance and puts it on the road. The blend of power and
Removing the roof from the F8 has little to no impact on the thrill to be had behind the wheel
torque makes for a bruising shove in your lower spine, but because it’s not a one-hit sucker punch it all remains balanced and controlled. The staggered torque through the lower gears helps, metering out the delivery and giving the rear axle a fighting chance of doing its job. There’s still a small dust-up between the Michelin Pilot Super Sport tyres and the surface, but you’re always travelling forward, slip minimised with the French tread always remaining in contact with the tarmac.
Thank the F8’s damping for this. Ferrari has, over the years, quietly gone about its business in the ride department, finessing the relationship between the requirement for iron-fisted control on track and compliance on road. It has resulted in cars such as the F8 that can filter the surface and feed back the constituent parts in a way that few other supercars can. A McLaren 720S still reigns supreme when it comes to ride control, but Ferrari is so close now that Woking might need to start taking notice.
There is a quality to the damping, especially when the ‘Bumpy Road’ setting is selected, that is such that from the driver’s seat you are delivered directly to the heart of the process. The 488 GTB donated its springs and anti-roll bars, but the adaptive dampers have been through a further round of development to include some of the Pista Spider’s alertness and crispness. As a result there’s more detail offered than there was from the GTB, but it’s not as vocal nor as tense as the Pista. Within a split second of you stirring the V8, your senses tune into every revolution of that engine, every spring compression and damper action, and every response to every steering input, so it takes only a very short journey to conclude that removing the roof from the F8 has little to no impact on the thrill to be had from behind the wheel compared to its coupe counterpart.
Let the V8 rev out – it’ll reach as far as 8000rpm, which is where peak power arrives too – in the first three gears and you’re hooked. Transfixed on the noise that’s now howling behind you, the tone rich and crisp, the bass filling in and wrapping itself around you. The higher tones that are lost due to the fitment of a gas particulate filter (this is the first Ferrari to be fitted with such technology) resulted in plenty of work being done to acoustically enhance the V8’s soundtrack. This in itself is nothing new, but the authentic and natural result Ferrari has achieved is. With the roof open you’re privy to a more natural overture, an open-air theatre of noise that has a purpose rather than being the brash, loud sideshow for the sake of it that so many cars of this ilk fall into the trap of.
Filled with as many Pista components as Ferrari could justify fitting to the F8’s engine (lighter crank and flywheel, and titanium con rods to name a few), it’s little wonder the power outputs are identical. But despite the family parts sharing, the F8 Spider’s V8 has a character of its own. Should you wish, you can snuff out the fireworks, leave the eight-speed as an auto, and then there’s no reason why an open-topped Tributo couldn’t be your everyday, all-season car. It certainly makes more sense than a Portofino in that regard. Roof closed and it plays the role of a mini V8-engined GT car, not so much wafting along but moving at a pace that demands as little or as much effort as you care to employ on each specific journey.
An F8 Spider makes far more sense as a car to drive as intended, though, because that’s when it’s at its best. Twist the manettino to Race mode, select manual shifts for the gearbox and Bumpy Road for the dampers, and any road with a twist or turn enlivens the Spider and you. Upshifts require rapid reflexes, and while the paddle’s mechanical action is robust and operates on a light touch, it still requires you to tense a finger muscle to pull the shift home. The gearing feels quite short, the upshift lights at times seemingly never extinguished when your right foot refuses to yield. And yet despite the violence that’s erupting over your shoulder, the Spider doesn’t deliver any shocks.
Brake hard and with assurance and the carbon-ceramics won’t let you down; they enjoy a solid push of the pedal but the result is just the right degree of pitch to get the F8 on its nose to turn in without the weight transfer nudging the rear into a race to overtake you. In slower turns Ferrari’s trademark quick steering still feels a little light in both responsiveness and feel, although it’s actually a degree or two heavier on the F8 than it was on the last GTB I drove. And this slight weight gain is welcome, providing some resistance to work against. Yet when the speed increases and the conditions permit, the quick rack and responsiveness of the front axle feel second nature and instantly welcome. You absorb their actions, digest their communications and react accordingly. On a flowing, quick stretch of test route the paucity of input required by your wrists is almost Caterham-like when it comes to directing the Spider in the desired direction.
There is an abundance of grip to lean against, the Michelins finding traction and refusing to let go until you provoke it or get greedy with the throttle and clumsy with the steering. But this grip doesn’t result in a numbness; as with so many 21st century Ferraris the F8 Spider lets you in on the action.
You can lean on the front end more than you first anticipate and get into the throttle way earlier than expected. There’s some scrub from the front when you’ve been greedy on the way in to slower turns and a little slip from the rear when you’re being provocative on the way out, both scenarios telegraphed back in time for you to react naturally and on your terms before Ferrari’s latest SSC (Side Slip Angle Control) 6.1 and FDE+ (Ferrari Dynamic Enhancer) offer some advice depending on how many questions you’ve asked. Both will also make you feel like a hero before stepping in and righting your wrongs before they get too expensive, although they’re not miracle workers and 710bhp, rear-wheel drive and a considerable number of kilos positioned in the middle of a car can still make for a mighty moment and an embarrassing audition for the latest YouTube supercar crash compilation.
As with the F8 Tributo, the new Spider builds on the 488’s talents, a car that took some time to show its true colours and personality. Additional layers of detail bring the chassis alive further still, removing some of the digital focus and reinjecting a more analogue feel to deliver a more organic driving experience that brings the driver back into play. The steering delivers more confidence without losing any of its agility and razor-sharp reactions, and the engine remains a piece of engineering wonderment.
Inevitably, Ferrari’s latest is always going to be compared to McLaren’s. Some will prefer the hydraulic steering and chassis control of a 720S and how it manages to bring a level of consistency to every road and its surface that few others this side of a Lotus can. Some will even prefer its gruff, laggy V8 and more purposeful approach to being a supercar. But others will favour the more cultured and textured approach of the F8. How it’s able to relax when required at no cost to its ultimate performance.
A twin-test between the two will provide the definitive answer. Should we compare the two in coupe form, I predict Woking might come away with the metaphorical tin pot (we might even stretch to a carbon one). But should it be the Spiders that come together, my gut instinct would be that roof-down supercar driving gets little better than from behind the wheel of an F8 Spider. ⌧