Headless horsepower
Let’s get straight to the point: the Pista Spider is exactly the same as the Pista Coupe in most respects. It’s got the same ballistic, race-derived 710bhp engine, the same complicated set of e-diffs and electronic managers, the same joyously technical weave of aerodynamics and the same uncanny ability to make you worry you may actually swallow your tongue under full-bore acceleration.
Depending on the position of the
manettino (wheel-mounted mode switch), it smacks through the gears with varying degrees of shotgun rapidity, howls through the lightweight Inconel exhaust in a variety of octaves and gradually loosens the traction control until you’re left unicycling on a knife-edge of grip balanced on a windy highwire of talent. The engine is faintly rabid – maximum power isn’t until 8,000rpm – the delivery remarkably naturally aspirated-feeling for a car that makes obvious and exciting use of a patently unnaturally aspirated torque curve, and it’s exciting and life-affirming and all the things a supercar should be. It’s a Pista.
Add to that little lot a slim, two-panel fold-away electric hard-top, and you have the added bonus of hearing the gears actually engage, as well as the ability to absorb a little bit more vitamin D while your ears cringe away from the shouty exhaust. At about 50kg more than the Coupe, truthfully you’ll struggle to feel the weight differential or any troubling dynamic difference unless you were driving both back-to-back on the same piece of road and have deeply sensitive buttocks. It’s easy to drive fast, hard to drive to its absolute full potential, and feels as dramatic as possible while still being an absolute doddle around town. It’s also
interesting how natural all the tech feels. Once you start delving into the systems of the Pista, you realise there’s a set of controls so massively complex you have to sit down with expert instruction for several hours to prevent your brain simply liquefying and dripping out of your ears. But on the road it just feels… right. In fact, there are situations where the Pista feels almost four-wheeldrive, dragging the front end around when you think it should wash wide, dealing with big bumps where you reckon it might just bounce. And the Spider does all of this with the exhaust howling harder than the Coupe, and the more intimate feeling of hearing those shotgun gearshifts engaging. Dropping from, say, fifth to second down through the gears for a tight hairpin is one of life’s great joys.
More theatrical than either a McLaren 720S Spider or Porsche 911 GT2/3 RS, more outright fun than a Lambo Performante Spyder, the Ferrari Pista Spider sits in a little niche of its own. OK, so the whole slightly arrogant Ferrari pitch is a bit offputting at times, but you can’t argue with the execution of the vehicle itself. I’m not a Ferrari devotee, but a blast in a Pista Spider on a sunny day on a good road will remind you what’s good about life. It will satisfy a racer and a poser in equal measure and delight pretty much everyone. The Spider loses very little dynamically when compared to the Pista Coupe, and gains quite a lot in terms of immersion in the wider experience. Convertibles – especially these neat little folding hardtops – don’t feel very compromised. If you don’t believe me, find a track, drop the top and launch to 124mph in eight seconds dead, and drop through the gears into a tight set of corners. You’ll be a convert in 10.
“A BLAST IN A PISTA SPIDER ON A SUNNY DAY WILL REMIND YOU WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT LIFE”