Prancing Force

Ferrari’s Pista-powered F8 Tributo is here and ready to take on McLaren’s brilliant 720S. With the latest electronic wizardry on board, does it have the weapons to take on Britain’s finest?

- John Barker

THERE COULD BE ONE REASON WHY FERRARI has replaced the 488 GTB after just four years in production, and that reason could be the McLaren 720S, the GTB’s versatile, 700bhp-plus, British rival. It’s more likely, though, that there are a number of reasons. Maybe there’s a hybrid model on the way (aside from the SF90 Stradale) and the 710bhp F8 Tributo is holding the fort until it arrives; it seems an unusual step for Ferrari to make a third car on the same platform in such a short space of time, and this one has its roots in the 458 Italia that launched only a decade ago.

Yet whether it’s knee-jerk or stopgap or was in the plan all along, there’s no question the F8 Tributo is a great looking car – the best off this platform for me. Better than that, the F8 takes the 488 Pista’s 710bhp engine (well, most of it) but not its steely dynamic resolve, adding Ferrari’s latest electronics to make it more deployable and exploitable. Where better to experience this in action than Fiorano? Turns out the answer is actually, unexpectedly, the Tuscan hills. But the track is where we start our test drive.

‘We wanted to combine Pista performance with 488 GTB useability,’ development driver Fabrizio Toschi says as we leave the pit area. To this end the F8 uses GTB springs and anti-roll bars, but has recalibrated adaptive damper control to deliver some of the Pista’s cornering crispness. And to help manage powerslides, there is version 6.1 of Ferrari’s Side Slip Control and a version of the Pista’s Ferrari Dynamic Enhancer, dubbed FDE+ in the F8 because it offers support in both Race and CT Off drive modes.