FERRARI P80/C
We all know that money is no guarantee of taste. But when enthusiasm and dedication come together, true magic can happen... Behold the latest SP project, the P80/C
What happens when a tifoso has the deep pockets tot match his enthusiasm? A one-off special, that’s what
Fraught in terms of the track window, of ensuring that all the temperatures are optimal, that you’re comfortable both physically in the car and mentally with its myriad operating systems. The variables are almost endlessly… variable.
Yet we’ve added a few more today, and they’re big. As the man from Michelotto, the specialist that’s prepared and run Ferrari GT race cars since 1969, adjusts the belts on a seat designed for someone more snake-hipped than me, the Monza pit-lane beckons.
Monza. The heartbeat of Italian motorsport. Home to some of the most romantically oil-flecked dudes ever to climb into a racing car. Stomping ground of the tifosi. Ahead lies one of F1’s most notorious chicanes, the Variante del Rettifilo, which flows into the breathtaking curva grande, and then the Curve di Lesmo… This place is hugely fast and hugely historic. On a warm day, the light has a liquid quality and strafes the trees in poetic shards.
So we have the location. We also have the car, the Ferrari P80/C. The what? It has fabulous front wings, prominent rear buttresses, a visor cockpit and enough aero to retard a rocket. But it’s also as enigmatic as the guy who commissioned it, a true flight of fantasy, one of one, with a price to match (circa £5m). It’s based on the 488 GT3 racer, so it comes with a ‘take-no-prisoners’ default setting and Pirelli slicks. The paint finish is called Rosso Vero – true red – and has a ceramic finish that requires aboveaverage valeting skills.
P80/C might not be wearing the SP nomenclature that denotes it as the latest from Ferrari’s Special Projects division, but that’s what it is. This is the skunkworks that sits at the summit of Ferrari’s product hierarchy, and invites top clients to create their own cars. According to ex-Ferrari CEO Amedeo Felisa, SP clients “effectively embody the marque, and [go] beyond just being a collector”.
TIME WITH ANY RACING
CAR TENDS TO BE FRAUGHT.
This is an elite club. There have been approximately 40 since Ferrari activated the programme in 2008, from Japanese Ferrarista Junichiro Hiramatsu’s SP1 – a restrained ode to Pininfarina design great Leonardo Fioravanti – via Eric Clapton’s SP12 EC BB 512 homage, to last year’s SP38 ‘Deborah’. These are highly personal expressions, on which basis some are, let’s just say, more convincing than others.
Then there’s the P80/C. This isn’t just the best SP car, this is one of the best cars to emerge from Maranello in aeons – and that’s saying something, given Ferrari’s 21st-century run of form. Its owner is Hong Kong-based publishing entrepreneur TK Mak, who’s also CEO of Blackbird Automotive. He’s a new breed of Ferrari owner – younger, hipper and more innately fashionable than the established adherents – something Ferrari is keen to cultivate as the car world shifts on its axis.
TK is no arriviste, though: he knows more about Ferrari and its history than almost anyone. The P80/C is remorselessly now, but also a love letter to Ferrari’s beloved endurance racers, in particular the 330 P3/4 that saw the company avenge its drubbing at the hands of Ford’s GT40 at Le Mans by winning the 1967 Daytona 24 hours.
“Like many Ferraristi, I’ve been enamoured of the ‘Sports Prototipi’ of the Sixties and Seventies since I was a child,” he tells
“ONE-OFF, SLICK TYRES, HIGH-SPEED TRACK, BRING IT BACK IN
ONE PIECE...”
me. “A time of trial and error, a world without computerassisted design, where engineers would travel the lengths of their imagination and experience to try and claim those milliseconds, driven by a sink-or-swim mentality, and when races were sometimes won on grit alone.
“To survive, you had to win – and the result was some of the most beautiful racing cars ever made, even to this day. For P80/C, the goal from the get-go was to recreate the feeling of that at era – of aesthetics meeting engineering, of equal parts beauty and nd performance. I wanted to use this as a way of projecting my vision on for a future GT Prototipi – my interpretation of a future design language for Ferrari, a brand that lies very close to my heart.”
TK’s team is making a film about the car, and it’s enjoying something of a world tour. You’ll catch it at the Goodwood Festival val of Speed in a few weeks, but the first stop is Monza. A couple of Ferrari GT drivers have shaken it down during its development and another, Maurizio Mediani, is here today. In total, maybe three people have driven it – not including its owner. Now me. Kid gloves have replaced the racing variety.
Such are the complexities of GT racing that the 488 GT3 is less powerful than its road-going sibling, and runs approximately ly 600bhp according to the series’ ‘BOP’ – balance of performance – regulations. This drives Maranello’s top people crazy and seems retrogressive, to say the least, but it levels the playing field. d. Ferrari has race-proved hundreds of these cars in various global championships, and they’re robust and usefully fuel-efficient. The engine is the 3.9-litre, twin-turbo V8, with modified, lightweight internals and an Inconel exhaust, but as the race-spec engine is only running 0.7bar of boost there’s way more potential.
Which is where today’s assignment gets slightly political: the P80/C is running a more aggressive engine map, but no one will confirm how much more aggressive. There’s talk of 800bhp, though, and on the simulator it’s apparently doing some eyepopping times round Fiorano. In the midst of the conjecture, all I can think is: one-off, slick tyres, high-speed track, nothing to prove, bring it back in one piece...
It fires up with an extended push on a surprisingly small starter button, and settles into an even, unexpectedly highpitched idle. The digital display ahead of me monitors the vital signs with hyperactive intensity. The central console is a single wodge of carbon fibre totally unrelated to the road car, though a big vent and aircon issues a welcome blast of cool air. Nor is the wheel even a full wheel; its alien form should feel odd and it’s festooned in buttons, but of course it’s brilliant to hold. Racecar. Among others, there are dials for fuel mode and engine map, and the switches to adjust traction control are top left and right. We won’t be troubling them today, although no amount of fastacting algorithms can help yaw on stone-cold slicks.
The transmission is the ubiquitous six-speed unit from Xtrac. Engage first and release the weighty clutch pedal for an easy