FERRARI F458
stuff, really nice. The 458 is a case of, “wow, you can really attack the corner now and get turned in and be aggressive and not worry about the rear losing grip”. It’s a big step forward, for sure.’ Comparing the cornering
attributes of the F430s and F458s at the 12 Hours of Sebring revealed how much Michelotto has accomplished by altering the ride quality of the new car. Where the F430s always used a bit of extra roll and dive to load the tyres and transfer weight, the F458 moves visibly less while cornering and under hard braking. Simply put, the normally demonstrative moves of the Prancing Horse have been muted. After listening in to a number
of conversations in the pit lane amongst F458 drivers, perhaps too much anti-dive geometry has been used, leading to the rather numb handling sensation some drivers reported, so it is believed the first batch of updates for the F458 will include geometry revisions to mitigate this.
Bell, who took the F458’s first
major international win at the Paul Ricard in April, says his JMW team worked through a number of changes at the French circuit to try and improve the car’s straight-line limitations. ‘First, we’ve all got a new, taller Gurney on the rear now, and it’s quite obvious when you get up to a certain speed that it’s doing its job. It’s been put there to slow us down, and it does. You definitely feel like you get into top gear and not a lot really happens. So I would say that’s been true with most of the cars. Having said that, in the past with the Ferrari, when you’ve taken aero out of it, it’s responded very well. But I think the truth will be known at Le Mans, when we start taking aero off. We took a little bit off at Paul Ricard and played with bits and bobs, and didn’t really find a huge amount, to be honest. It’s little stuff we’re looking to improve, and Michelotto will get it sorted quickly, like they always do.’ Bell also reported that the change to the Bosch MS5.1
system has been seamless so far: ‘For a completely new system it’s been a very smooth transition. And certainly everything that we’ve had so far has worked perfectly. You’d expect electronic glitches for the first six months, but we haven’t really had any on the cars I’ve driven. And I think it’s a step forward because, for example, the traction control system is more advanced. It’s a nicer system to work with as a driver, and that can only be good – we don’t necessarily rely on traction control but, if it’s there
and you don’t feel it’s working, it’s going to be looking after the tyres better than we humanly can. I think that will be seen in long durations, as it does seem to be doing its job. The Marelli system was fine, but for example its traction control felt a bit basic.’ There’s no doubt the F458 has a long way to go to catch and surpass the F430’s record in competition but, if it’s early potential is anything to go by, it looks like Munich and Detroit might have another five years of hellish fighting ahead.
TYRE CHOICE
After racing Extreme Speed’s F458 at Sebring on Michelins and winning Paul Ricard in JMW’s Dunlop-shod F458, British driver Rob Bell says the advanced state of tyre technology from both companies give Ferrari racers an excellent choice. ’Michelin has been there for
years. They are the benchmark that everyone aims for, but I’ve done a lot of work with Dunlop over the last five or six years and I think they’re knocking on the door. They’ve won the first two major races of the year [Sebring and Paul Ricard], so they’ve done their sums. They’re both good companies, though, and their products both work very well on the car. The only thing I would say is, I suppose Michelin have about six months on the car ahead of Dunlop.
And there’s a slight difference in balance – one seems to be slightly stronger at front grip, the other is slightly stronger at rear grip. In the grand scheme of things, they’ve both done a great job. ‘When you get down to the
finite, real last few per cent of tyre performance, that’s really getting down to the last one or two tenths per lap. Both seem to last very well on the car and again, only time will tell, but maybe the car is just good on its tyres. We’re still gathering data at the minute, and we don’t really know the answer, I guess because we’ve not had a really hot day, but Sebring is a pretty hard test on tyres and they lasted pretty well. Again, at Ricard, the tyre consistency was very good, so I think both have got parity at the minute.’
With a choice of either Michelin or Dunlop tyres, drivers have two excellent products on offer that, in early tests, have shown remarkable parity
www.racecar-engineering.com • Le Mans
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