Ferrari F430

Ferrari F430
Originally uploaded by Florian*.

So today one of our friends dropped by to check on the progress of his Evo. In his red Ferrari F430. WOW!!!

Of course everyone wanted to know how it goes. "It feels slower than the Evo for some reason..." Yeah right! It's 4.3L worth of Italian V8 goodness dude!

So we're standing around admiring this exquisite work of automotive art and he says "Hey let's go for a ride." He didn't have to ask twice!!

The dashboard is in hand-stitched black leather ... nice :) Fires it up and the burbly V8 comes to life. Quick dab on the throttle brings the engine to a lovely hum, a lot more bassy than the F360's shriek.

Driving slowly out of the compound, we check for traffic both ways. Manettino set to "Race". All clear! Make a left turn, straighten the steering wheel, and floor it! The rear wheels chirp as the traction control struggles to bring the car in line, but we're still accelerating strongly to the 8500 RPM red line... upshift into 2nd, the gear change is hard and brutal. The car is still pulling hard, and into 3rd. A car ahead slows so he shuts it down.

Repeat.

My initial impressions... it's got good mid-range torque. He's right. It doesn't feel as raw as Sam's car in the first few gears. But the power never flags even towards rev limiter. Should be a real highway monster.

The car is on overrun when the foot is off the throttle so that should result in the occasional fireball out the exhaust. The sound of it is something that never gets old.

Hopefully he'll bring it to our next trackday so we have some idea of what it can do. I'll sure be looking forward to it. :)