Chris Harris Rants against Ferrari

In an issue of Autocar from October last year they were doing a 'best drivers car 2010' test in which a 458 was included. Steve Sutcliffe said this in his column in that very issue:

...Ferrari turned up with in force with not one but two 458's - one set up for the road, one set up specifically for circuit work - plus a small army of tyre technicians, engineers and test drivers. And when I returned in the 458 ... team Ferrari didn't seem very happy. The lap time wasn't fast enough, they said (they'd timed the car around Donington the week before and gone half a second quicker than me), which meant they were worried about the competition going quicker. Which is precisely what happened when I climbed into the Noble, and then the 911, and went eight-tenths and five-tenths quicker respectively. ... When the Ferrari boys realised that their car had been beaten first by the Noble and then by the Porsche as well, they threw what can only be described as a bit of a wobbly. And then they produced another set of tyres, filled with a little less pressure all around and asked if I would have another go. ... Hence the reason it went a second quicker than originally, placing it ahead of both the Noble and the Porsche. Which presented us with something of a poser: should we publish the slower, original lap time for the 458 and incur the wrath of Ferrari, which, to its credit, had decided to take our event very seriously indeed? Or should we go with the faster one and incur the wrath of Porsche and Noble, neither of which had turned up with a truck full of tyres and technicians?

I was gonna mention that aswell. It's fucking pathetic.


Too late...

:roflmao:

I KNEW the McLaren would annihilate the Ferrari. I thought the Porsche would've done a bit better tho.
 
I KNEW the McLaren would annihilate the Ferrari. I thought the Porsche would've done a bit better tho.



I think the Porsche would have been closer to the McLaren if he hadn't started so poorly.
 
I KNEW the McLaren would annihilate the Ferrari. I thought the Porsche would've done a bit better tho.

Well, it's always difficult to get a 4-wheel-drive car off the line quickly without burning the clutch.

However, the Porsche will annihilate the other two in the rain, which makes up about 50 % of our weather.
 
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I got same beef with Ferrari as I have with just about any other manufacturer and most motorsports. Everyone is going for the 'ring times and the 0-60 times and the G forces and the track times and so on and so forth. Pretty much no one gives a damn about it, someone already posted that those who buy Ferrari do so because of that horse on the hood not because they are trying to get top time at Laguna Seca.

I think the sad state of super/hyper cars is that everyone is trying to make the cars into road versions of race cars, we are slowly seeing the death of a proper manual (how many of those performance cars even have that option these days?) because it's just not fast enough. Electronics are doing 90% of the driving these days in just about any car. Why don't the manufacturers try to concentrate on making cars fun to drive?

What Ferrari is doing is retarded simply as an extension of the whole "OMGWTFBBQ WE CANNOT BE BEAT BY A VW BUG IN DRAG!!!!!" forgetting that the whole point of a fast car is to have fun and that their customers are not likely to ever get even close to the times set by test drivers.
 
This was a road going version of a race car,

800px-AC_Shelby_Cobra_%28Auto_classique%29.JPG


So where many other homogenization specials.
 
And yet, 90% of times the general, non-petrolhead public sees a red sportscar, they call it a Ferrari. Even if it?s a Corvette, Porsche, Lamborghini, Pagani, Aston Martin, McLaren, Jaguar, etc etc.

When I was looking around for my first car, I remember walking into a Ford dealership along with my friend. There was a Ford GT(40) in the lobby and my friend went 'What's a Ferrari doing in a Ford dealership ?' :lol:
 
This was a road going version of a race car,

800px-AC_Shelby_Cobra_%28Auto_classique%29.JPG


So where many other homogenization specials.
While you are correct the difference is with the times. Cars for motorsport use have been getting progressively more high tech as they are meant for one thing and one thing only - top time/position. (well in endurance racing also reliability) That is an understandable trait as the teams who win get money, it's a business and you want every possible advantage you can get in business.

Road cars are made for driving enjoyment (sports car that is) not to compete for the top time. A 1 second slower 0-60 doesn't mean much on the street as the drivers are not generally skilled enough to take advantage of it. (I had a CTS-V try to race me off the line in the rain, take a guess who won. Hint: It was the one with more driving wheels) There are also no homologation rules any more (AFAIK) so there is no reason for the racing tech for the street. Yes flappy paddles are great when you are attacking Monaco and need that .01 of a second to beat the guy running right behind you but on Tail of the Dragon getting that heel and toe timed correctly and holding the car through a hairpin is a lot more rewarding than just pointing it in the general direction you want it to go in and hitting the throttle.
 
There are also no homologation rules any more (AFAIK) so there is no reason for the racing tech for the street.

GT classes still have homologation rules, but they're a lot tighter than they were in the 1990s when homologation specials like the 911 GT1 or CLK-GTR were produced simply to make the racing versions legal. Nowadays the cars and base engines must be mass-produced in certain numbers according to the manufacturer's size and status (I think... that's probably the only way to accomodate certain small-volume manufacturers, like Spyker, in GT racing).
 
I could be wrong, but wasn't the Z06 made for homologation?
 
I could be wrong, but wasn't the Z06 made for homologation?

It's probably the other way around, the car was produced for the street first and then the racing car was homologated off it. At least that's the case with the C6 ZR-1 and the current GT2 Corvette.

EDIT: Okay, maybe that wasn't the case with the old C6.R, but then again, GT1 had slightly different homologation requirements. For example, the Saleen S7 road car was delivered to customers from 2001-2002 and the racing version had already been racing in GT1/GTS since late 2000.
 
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Which is interesting, because I have a Ferrari 458 in GT5 that's flat purple with gold rims and a carbon fiber hood, tuned to ~750 HP :D

So on top of everything else they're inconsistent about their demands. Or maybe money talks?

I think it was more them coming to the slow realization that kids growing up with Gran Turismo were lusting after Skyline GT-Rs instead of Ferraris. ;)
 
Anyone else remember why there were no Ferraris in GT4? It was because Ferrari (at the time) refused to license any video game where a Ferrari is not the fastest car in the game.

I'm not sure where I read it, but I thought it was due to the cost of Ferrari and Porsche licenses?

RUF licenses, obviously, are cheaper, and pretty much got you the same shape with better performance...
 
Well, it's always difficult to get a 4-wheel-drive car off the line quickly without burning the clutch.

However, the Porsche will annihilate the other two in the rain, which makes up about 50 % of our weather.

If this would have been a proper test, they would have tested the 911 with the double clutch gearbox (as the other two have automatics). That has a launch control, so even the least talented driver can get it of the line quickly. Mind you he still has to react properly ;) To proof that: http://www.evo.co.uk/videos/planetevovideos/255628/porsche_911_turbo_s.html
 
Where does it say that the Porsche in the video doesn't have PDK?

Nowhere ;) My answer was more related to the AWD of the line problem.

Anyway, btt: imho Italian supercars are not really trustworthy. As we know Ferraris and Lambos regularly catch fire or have other issues like individual spontaniously blocking wheels - even nowadays. At least in the case of Lambo, I happen to know that Audi is really keen on getting the quality up to their standards, bringing in specialists from Germany. Of course those companies are really small (800 people in case of Lambo), so they normally can't afford proper testing that a normal mass production car has to undergo. However, as there are big corporations in the background, things look a bit different. Lambo now seems to catch up, but Ferrari obviously still struggles massively with quality, otherwise they wouldn't have to be concerned about their cars being tested.
btw: I am pretty sure that almost no manufacturer runs dyno-tests with press vehicles. At least I remember reading reviews, where cars didn't reach the claimed bhp figures. Of course things could be a bit different with performance cars...
 
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