As family lineages go, the run of mid-engined Ferrari V8 lightweights is a fairly sensational one: 348 GT Competizione, 355 Challenge, 360 Challenge Stradale, 430 Scuderia and 458 Speciale. Today Ferrari has announced the newest member of the clan: the 488 Pista.
That's 'Pista' as in 'track', the 488 following its illustrious predecessors in aiming for a lighter, louder, more circuit focused package. As such the Pista is said to borrow heavily from the GTE and Challenge 488 race cars, featuring upgrades like titanium rods, a carbon intake plenum, Inconel exhaust manifolds and a lighter crank.
Overall power is 720hp at 8,000rpm, allied to an incredible torque peak of 568lb ft. Apparently Pista torque is higher than the GTB at all engine speeds, delivering "a feeling of consistently smooth, powerful acceleration with even faster turbo response". The end result is a 0-124mph time of 7.6 seconds, passing 62 after 2.85 of them. Top speed is claimed to be more than 211mph.
Now these focused Ferraris have always been about more than just outright power - the Pista's 50hp gain is actually the most these special Berlinettas have ever received - and, unsurprisingly, there's a renewed focused on mass reduction and aerodynamics too. Like the Speciale, the Pista saves 90kg from the kerbweight from the regular GTB, resulting in a 1,280kg dry weight with the near-obligatory lightweight options. New carbon components, including wheels, bumpers and spoilers, plus a stripped out interior, will contribute to that improvement.
The new front end look is called an 'S-Duct', which works with the redesigned diffusers to improve front-end downforce. In addition to that the underbody vortex generators are also updated, the rear diffuser mirrors the design of the GTE car and the rear blown spoiler is described as "optimised", as well as being longer and higher. The result is a 20 per cent increase in downforce.
Are you up to date with your Ferrari acronyms? Do you know your SSC from your SCM? Good, because now there's a new one to learn: FDE, or Ferrari Dynamic Enhancer. (And just in case you didn't know, SSC is the slide slip control, now in its sixth generation, and SCM are the magnetorheological dampers). The Ferrari Dynamic Enhancer uses software to adjust brake pressure at the calipers, said to further finesse the 488's performance through and out of corners. We're not entirely sure how that works either, but anything that means a driver can "more easily control yaw angles" sounds like very good news. The tyres you will be roasting at this time are a new set of Michelins, presumably an evolution of the Cup 2.
Plenty to be excited by with the Pista, then, what with that spec and the incredible back catalogue. It will be revealed in full at Geneva, where additional spec details are due as well. More as we have it...
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