ehind the wheel LAST OF
ehind the wheel LAST OF A DYNASTY
A full-throttled roar and lightning quickness – the Ferrari F8 Tributo is a masterpiece with noble bloodlines By Adam Hay-Nicholls All the greats have tributes of one kind or another: rock bands, wristwatches, haute couture. Ferrari has gone further by paying tribute to itself, and it isn’t empty bombast. The F8 Tributo doffs its cap to what’s being hailed as the greatest internal combustion engine known to man. I put it to the test on Italy’s Varano circuit, near Parma, under sunshine, rain and moonlight. The F8’s 3.9l twin-turbo V8 thunders down the straight, the exhausts crack on the dual-clutch downshift, and as the power is reapplied and air is forced into the intake it makes a noise like Satan sucking unleaded through a straw – as opposed to its normally aspirated forebear, the 458 Italia, which was the devil slamming shots. Comparatively, it’s muted, but it’s 5dB up on the standard 488, helped by an in-exhaust resonator, and it’s more joyously raucous than McLaren’s opposite number, the pulchritudinous 720S. The front end is ravenously bitey. Colossal downforce and fat 305/30 rubber glue its 710bhp to the road. Zero to 100km/h arrives in 2.9 seconds, 200km/h in 7.8, and were Varano big enough we’d be hitting 340km/h not long thereafter. The figures are a step up on its outgoing relative, the 488 GTB. In fact, the paternity test points to the soupedup 488 Pista. It’s got the latter’s engine, using race-derived lightweight components with slightly adapted camshafts and valve NetJets 37
