Sunday 1 June 2014

2014 Ferrari La Ferrari

2014 Ferrari La Ferrari

First, how do you improve on the Enzo? Higher performance, effortlessly, explains scientific director, Franco Cimatti, except smaller and new wieldy. And what if they could recline the driver like they did in Schumachers 2003 F1 car where the poor man had to meet at 45 degrees from upright? That would induce neck problems in mere mortals, except they did manage 32 degrees, which is seven degrees new laid back than in the Enzo and allowed a 30mm lessen roof silhouette, even as still accommodating a driver in a racing helmet. Near arent seats as such. Instead, you meet on the floor of the carbon-fibre tub, in bum shaped recesses and at 150mph your derriere is just 130mm from the road.

The tub is complete in Ferraris Formula One composites shop where skilled workers hand over lay pre-impregnated carbon fibre mats on top of moulds, which are then vacuum formed in one of five autoclaves. Pre-preg carbon fibre like this is stronger and requires 35 per cent excluding resin than the transfer moulded type that was used in the Enzo, and as a result La Ferrari is 20 per cent lighter and 27 per cent new torsionally stiff.

The engine in LaFerrari is the six-litre V12 thats used in the F12 and FF, except its hepped up to give 800bhp and 516lb ft of torque, with a small motorgenerator replacing a traditional alternator. The engine drives the rear wheels via Ferraris own seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox.

Hung off the back of the engine and behind the rear wheels is the main 161bhp199lb ft stimulating motor. Near are four separate stream inverters and electrical controllers which meet on top of the main motor. In addition theres an electrical cooling compressor under the sun-hat, which provides battery cooling and air conditioning, plus an added two coolant systems for the engine and the oil-cooled stimulating motor.

We experienced LaFerrari at the Italian companys put to the test track in Italy

The hybrid method weighs 146kg in total with a 60kg, 2.3kWh lithium-ion battery split into two and mounted low behind the seats and carbon-fibre tub, with the bottom armoured with Kevlar to prevent biting by road debris. Its every one of enormously clever and derives partly from Ferraris F1 experience and as well from a hybrid program started in 2008 culminating in the 2010 599 Hy-KERS concept.

In the past the track run we take LaFerrari elsewhere of town, it is a road car similar to every one of. The big surprise is the ride - comfortable, in ill feeling of the delicately padded tub seat, and not clackety-stiff like a quantity of carbon-fibre cars know how to be.

The interior of the car is small, except thanks to careful cutouts in the scissor doors, I know how to grasp my long suffering back and amount 12s in, though those doors take a hard jerk to close. The driving position is pretty occupied on, with the wheel in meet of your face and my knees bent vaguely higher than I would like, except you know how to see elsewhere and thanks to a small window above the engine, wing mirrors mounted on breathtakingly audacious blades, and a rear-view camera, reversing is at smallest amount feasible. Near is a small box under the sun-hat behind the radiator just about the amount of two shoe boxes, which is it as a lot as storage goes.

Loads of of LaFerraris controls are on the steering wheel, including those for the illumination and wipers

So we bumped roughly speaking the sleeping policeman of Maranello, through the potholes on the mountain roads and it felt as habitual as a near-1,000bhp super hybrid know how to ambiance. The gearchange works speedily and efficiently, the brake pedal feels artificial, except the anchors are ecologically aware. Sounds fine very. Loud, except distinctive, almost vintage at idle, a harmonious scream at occupied revs and dragging a clattering spoonful of fuel down the pipes on overrun. And so to the track and my turn...

LaFerrari joins a long and impressive lineage of Ferrari supercars: the 1984 288 GTO, the 1987 F40, the 1995 F50 and the 2002 Enzo. Ive single-minded them every one of and LaFerrari is by a lot and missing the best, simply rude in verity. Not just in top speed and acceleration, except in the way it reacts like a twist to the accelerator slam the choke down and occupied acceleration snaps your strut in just 0.1sec, excluding than partially the equivalent for the F12. So, theres none of the magnificent building crescendo of power which characterises, say the Enzo, or the turbo-lagged explosion of tyre-shredding as with the F40. LaFerrari is simply near at the finish off your right foot as fast as you could want it.

And the tricks Ferrari has played with the stimulating motors the meet motor helping power the engine up on its torque curve, the rear contents in that curve and acting as a traction-control way and Hoovering up every tiny watt of power into the battery.

LaFerrari uses a petrolelectric hybrid drivetrain

Not that the driveline is like a light lever, new that the hybrid method enhances the big V12 pending it feels utterly invincible. Its a biological and instinctive power method rather than artificial even if near is rather a allocation of it. Down the main straight at Fiorano, for example, the car gains speed so quickly even the slightest curve becomes a big corner and at the finish off, with the speedo well past 170mph, youve got to plan how you are on offer to grasp round the tight right hander, or you are in the generally terrible trial. And thats where you ought to expend the aero brakes near the beginning.

Above 100kmh, the aero self-control help you if you are fast and hard, admonished de Simone similar to my first stint, below 100kmh youve simply got the brakes and youll be on offer very fast. Theyre big powerful anchors, except they almost didnt do the job when I missed my appointment with the aero stoppers and gained a pair of perspiring palms in the process. I know how to safely say that LaFerrari is the first car Ive single-minded where the straights are scarier than the corners.

Meanwhile elsewhere near in corner land, the handling is so exact it carves elsewhere the turns. The steering, which on the road feels borderline darty, is so precise the chassis feels almost derisorily connected to your body. Turn the wheel and the nose goes near, the chassis remains set and the tail follows. Youre not fighting twist, wilt or squish, because near is none. LaFerrari vegetation your head spinning as no more than a stunt flyer know how to, anchored in space and era, then darting in a extra direction like a dragonfly with no pitch, squat or body lean. For a car that rides so well, its uncannily like a circuit racer.

One thing that makes generally difference? muses Cimatti. The lessen centre of gravity. Given the same weight, if you know how to grasp a lessen centre of gravity, then you are winning, physics is on your side. The balance you know how to buy.

Andrew English drives LaFerrari

And even as its true that at 1.4 tons LaFerrari has bulk, its not a stoppage at the wheel. You know how to lean it on the outside meet Pirelli so hard that at times it feels like the rears are penduluming roughly speaking the fronts. I by no means notion Id recover something as visceral and exact, so scary fast and yet controllable as the Ferrari F40, except here it is and its much, much faster than an F40.

Oh, the economy? We started the day with a overflowing 86-litre fuel reservoir. Similar to thrashing round Maranello and Fiorano, by tea era the reservoir was almost dry, thats just about 4mpg. Spare me the homily just about how supercars know how to reduce atmospheric CO.

For those apostates to the supercar creed fed up with the gawping, juvenile arithmetical obsession, Ferrari has summoned them back with heart and technology. It seems extraordinary that such commitment and resources embodied in LaFerrari self-control be enjoyed by as not many as 499 stinking rich Ferraristi. Except near self-control be other hybrid Ferraris and this know-how self-control not be wasted. And if they are even a small part as upright as LaFerrari, theyll be interstellar.

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