Aerodynamic considerations (along with the two-seat tub and big V-12 placed lengthways behind it) best explain the shape of the F50. Its Pininfarina body may never be regarded as beautiful in the classic sense, but this machine has the same sort of athletic appeal as a modern jet fighter; its wing, lumps, bumps, nostrils, and ducts together make a powerful expression of purpose. When test ace Benuzzi slips on his shades and lowers himself into the cockpit, you can't help but think of "Top Gun."
Benuzzi has hammered F50 prototypes through more than 15,000 miles, many at the limit on the tight and twisty Fiorano circuit and flat-out around the high-speed Nardo bowl. He was helped in this onerous task by three-time World Champion Niki Lauda and current Ferrari Grand Prix racer Gerhard Berger-who hustled the F50 around Fiorano in 88.0 seconds, 3.5 seconds quicker than the F40's best, and more than 8 seconds quicker than the F355.
So you can't help wondering, as you stand in the shade of the Fiorano pits and watch the F50 blast by, what kind of animal it might be. Hard numbers-513 horsepower at 8000 rpm, 547 pound-feet of torque at 6500 rpm, 0-60 mph in 3.7 seconds, and a top speed of 202 mph-clearly illustrate the beast's potency.
It certainly sounds wild as it blasts beneath a small bridge almost directly in front of the pits, accelerating hard toward the 8500-rpm redline in fourth (130 mph), the sweet scream of the engine bouncing off the concrete walls and hitting you smack in the face. And when the F50 is finally brought to a halt in front of you, its engine somehow even smells like a racer's, its superheated liquids and metals cooling noisily-tickety-tickety-tick-as hazy clouds of hot air billow out from the two big nostrils in front of the windshield and escape through the louvers of the Perspex engine cover on the huge rear deck.
After wiping his brow, Benuzzi leans across the wide cabin, pushes open the passenger door, and beckons. The next three laps are a revelation-two laps at a canter, but one with the car wriggling and squirming across the full width of the track, rushing hard all the way to its rev limiter in second, third, and fourth gears (with just a brief squirt in fifth before stamping hard on the brakes at the end of the main straightaway), rumbling across the curbs at the corner exits, and diving sideways into the tight hairpin shrouded in tire smoke.
Unlike every other mid-engined Ferrari since the Boxer, this car is not at all mendacious at the limit. The F50 progressively pushes wide at the front rather than suddenly letting go at the rear (unless violently provoked), reacts to inputs from throttle, brake, and steering instantly but predictably, and responds obediently to applications of opposite lock. In the F40, with its whistling 2.9-liter V-8, you could be midway through a turn when-bang-one of the two turbos kicked in and the tail kicked out. In the F50, with its normally aspirated 4.7-liter V-12, the power delivery is more trustworthy, so that the line through a corner can be adjusted accurately with either steering or throttle. Although it's the most powerful and the fastest road-going Ferrari ever, this is, by a long way, the easiest to drive. It reminds of nothing more than a great big go-kart.
This impression is emphasized not only by the immensely rigid chassis, but also because the F50's body hardly rolls at all. This reassuring flatness through turns is helped by rigidly mounted anti-roll bars front and rear, stiff springs, the rubber-free mounts, and a low center of gravity (370 millimeters, compared with the F40's 415)-but what really give such composure are the gas-pressurized Bilstein dampers. As with the 456GT and F355, these are electronically and automatically variable. They react much more quickly than the human brain (30 to 40 milliseconds for most adjustments), and work independently of each other. On the outside of a bend the suspension can stiffen, while the inside suspension remains soft.
...
>>next page