Top-Down Horseplay

Ferrari’s latest V8-powered convertible is its most powerful, most technically accomplished and most distant.

- Daryl Lee

IT’S PROBABLY NOT an understatement to say that the Ferrari F8 Spider and its coupe fraternal twin, the F8 Tributo, are the distillations of everything Maranello has learnt about making extremely quick and capable road cars in the last 30 years.

For starters, the heart of any Ferrari, the F8 Spider’s engine. It’s a 3.9-litre, twin-turbo V8 that produces a colossal 720hp, 770Nm and will get from 0-100km/hr in 2.9 seconds. Its power output is 50hp more than its predecessor, the 488 Spider, and nearly thrice that of Ferrari’s first midengined V8 convertible sports car, the 308 GTS.

That power is fed through a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox, helped along by so many electronic chassis aids derived from its F1 racing and FXX test-bed programs that it’ll make your head spin.

Mostly from the sort of pace, it’s able to help the F8 Spider generate, and if nothing else, from trying to decode what those acronyms actually mean.

Honestly, though, the only two you should trouble yourself with are SSC 6.1 and FDE+. The former allows even rank amateurs to pull off picture-perfect drifts, and the latter, amongst other things, can imperceptibly brake an individual wheel during and exiting corners for more neutral handling.

Both the SSC and FDE systems are now active in the Race driving mode, which reflects their higher thresholds.