the 458 is a very
good road car, so our job was easy
for supremacy in the hotly contested GT2 category to its nemisis, Porsche. Except for the brief period during the 1990s when Ferrari’s F40 GT-LM was considered a worthy contender on the GT racing scene, Porsche’s various production- based racecars owned the lower tiers of GT competition, until the F430 moved to the forefront in 2008 and 2009. That brief taste of glory was parried back
W
by Weissach in 2010, with 997 RSRs winning their class at Le Mans, while championships in the ALMS and LMS drove the fi nal nails
ith two class wins at Le Mans and numerous championships in Europe and North America, Ferrari’s F430 racer took the fi ght
into the F430’s coffi n. Ferrari had its nose bloodied, and had
to respond with something special. Luigi Dindo, Michelotto’s chief engineer for the F458 GTC programme, says that with the F430 at the end of its development cycle, sweeping changes were saved for the new-for-2011 F458. Rather than carry over proven elements of the F430, every section of the F458 was treated with a brand new approach. ‘First of all, the 458 is a very good road
car, so our job was easy,’ says Dindo. ‘The target was to improve each aspect of the 430. First, the V8 engine, which, because it is production-based, uses direct injection to improve fuel consumption. And we tried to improve power and torque, because the new
motor is 4.5-litres instead of the 4.0-litres of the 430. Also, at the end the target was to make everything lighter. So we tried as much as possible on the engine to reduce weight without making crazy things, because it is a GT class for customers, not a works team.’
LESS POWER The ACO’s move to slow the GT2 class for 2011 resulted in the F458’s bigger engine producing almost 100bhp less than its road- going counterpart – approximately 470bhp at 6250rpm, thanks to dual 28.3mm air restrictors. Utilising four chain-driven cams and four valves per cylinder, the engine, code named F142, generates roughly 520Nm of torque at 5750rpm. Cast from aluminum, the dry-sumped F142 uses the lightweight metal
June 2011 •
www.racecar-engineering.com 11 Le Mans
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