If you want to understand modern Ferrari road cars, you have to look back to the F430. You might remember it as the last mid-engine Ferrari with a manual transmission, or simply as the one that came before the mighty 458. But, the F430 presented a new approach to vehicle dynamics, drawing a throughline straight to the new F80.
The F430 was the first Ferrari with an electronic rear differential, which could dramatically alter handling characteristics at will. Flicking through the settings on the "Manettino" switch on the steering wheel changed the differential’s locking characteristics, along with the engine’s throttle mapping, damper stiffness, traction and stability control intervention, and on paddle-shift F430s, the transmission settings. Better yet, the systems (other than the dampers) talked to each other.
Since the F430, Ferrari has added more sophistication to these systems and expanded how they interact with one another. In the 599 GTB, you got faster-acting magnetorheological dampers that allowed for even finer chassis control; The 458 Speciale debuted Side-Slip Angle Control (SSC), an algorithm that calculates yaw angle in real time and adjusts engine torque and e-differential locking to hit a targeted yaw rate; The F12tdf added rear-wheel steering; The 488 GTB integrated the adaptive dampers to the SSC system; The 812 Superfast added electric power steering; The 812 Competizione debuted a system that can steer the rear wheels in opposite directions. I could go on and on.
Ferrari does funky stuff with these systems. It sometimes softens individual dampers to help an individual tire find more grip. The independent rear-wheel steering system in the Competizione effectively toes in both rear wheels under braking, stabilizing the car’s rear end. But it’s worth looking in depth at two recent cars.
First is the SF90 Stradale. This was not Ferrari’s first hybrid, but the first with electric all-wheel drive. Powering each front wheel is an individual electric motor, adding all kinds of neat possibilities with ultra-fast torque vectoring to Ferrari’s bag of tricks. I was lucky to test the SF90 at the company’s Fiorano test track and sit with an engineer to compare the telemetry from my laps against Ferrari’s ace test driver Raffaele Simone. It was particularly illuminating, not just in that it showed I was not nearly as quick as Simone, but also why.
On corner exits, I was driving the SF90 like a normal car, easing onto the throttle pedal and unwinding the wheel. A perfectly valid approach—even if I was probably driving well under the limits of the tires—but not the way to get the most out of this particular car. The engineer told me, essentially, to trust the systems to sort everything out. Get on the right pedal hard, and let the car figure out the maximum available traction and drive to that. Not the easiest thing to do psychologically when you’ve got 986 horsepower on tap and some sense of self-preservation… or at least a desire not to stuff a half-million dollar supercar into The House That Enzo Built. But, that’s how the car wants to be driven.
Second is the Purosangue, Ferrari’s don’t-call-it-an-SUV. To manage the big weight and tall ride height of the four-door, Ferrari went to extreme measures developing an active suspension system based around Multimatic’s True Active Spool Valve (TASV) dampers. These dampers have 48-volt motors that drive a ball screw attached to the damper’s piston, allowing the car to put force into the suspension independent of road and driver input.
Ferrari uses the dampers to manage all body motions, obviating the need for stiff springs and anti-roll bars entirely. In the Purosangue, the upshot is incredible ride comfort but handling that feels entirely un-SUV-like. Active suspension allows you to eliminate body roll entirely—which Ferrari notably doesn’t do in the Purosangue, to preserve a more natural feel—and have total control over how you load the tires in all situations.
With the F80, Ferrari adds both a twin-motor front axle and active suspension. I’ve already written about what the active suspension will do here that it doesn’t in the Purosangue, namely allow for a more stable aerodynamic platform to manage the huge downforce the F80 is capable of generating, without compromising ride quality. And the SF90 example shows what Ferrari can do with motors on the front wheels, and in the F80 each one makes almost as much power (140 hp) as the whole hybrid system on the SF90 (160 hp).
Plus, the F80 has active aerodynamics, which aren’t new to Ferrari, but this is by far its highest-downforce road car yet. And, the F80’s V-6 has twin electric turbochargers. These are just like regular turbos, but there’s a small electric motor on the shaft between the turbine and compressor wheels, which is capable of accelerating or braking the system regardless of boost pressure. The obvious upshot here is mitigating lag to be basically nothing, but the turbos can also send energy back into the car’s battery. Ferrari also uses the turbos to vary boost pressure in each gear, giving the V-6 more of a naturally aspirated feel.
What I’m getting at here is that with the F80, Ferrari has created a car that has as-yet unprecedented control over all its various systems. Ferrari can pull many levers in its pursuit of ultimate vehicle dynamics. If you stop and think about the possibilities here, it’s truly mind bending.
Of course, it’s all down to what Ferrari actually does with this technology. On my SF90 drive, I remember having some pity for the engineers whose job it was to manage these many disparate parameters to create a cohesive car. That car seemed almost unbelievably complex then. Now add the world’s most advanced suspension system, active aerodynamics, and electric turbos to that mix.
But this is what Ferrari has been working toward. With the F430, it put a marker down and said “This is where we’re heading.” Total control via clever hardware and software. It’s not the only automaker that has this approach to vehicle dynamics, but none is quite so committed thus far.
Gallery: Ferrari F80
