RefBan

Referral Banners

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Driving The Ferrari 458 Spider On One Of The World's Curviest Roads

August 7th, 2012Top Story

Driving The Ferrari 458 Spider On One Of The World's Curviest Roads

By Jethro Bovingdon

Driving The Ferrari 458 Spider On One Of The World's Curviest Roads(Once upon a time British motoring writer Jethro Bovingdon crashed a Ferrari FF into a low stone curb. When we found out he'd then taken a brand new Ferrari 458 Spider to the Stelvio Pass — a place that's basically all low stone walls — we thought it only fair to give him a chance to gloat if he got the Ferrari out unscathed. He did.)

So there I was trundling into the offices of UK-based CAR magazine for an editorial meeting. Still with that sick feeling in my stomach from the incident that happened just a day or two before. Yes, that one. The one where I managed to drive over a curb in a Ferrari FF and make two expensive alloy circles into squares (in my defense it was pretty well hidden and only popped up half way around the bend!).

At least nobody would hear about it, I thought, as I drove…
 
Then I got a call from (bows head in Jalopnik reverence...) Chris Harris.

"You're going to have an interesting day then," he said. And so it began. CAR had decided to put up the video before I got in and it beamed across the web and to the outer reaches of the universe in about 12 seconds. I'm sure there are cannibals in the depths of the Congo rainforest who've seen that bloody video.  
 
Click to view Well here's another video of me and a Ferrari, this time a 458 Spider. Shot for Car and Driver at the Stelvio Pass in Italy. Jalopnik agreed to run it because my FF balls-up has featured a few times on the site already (I'm not a betting man but I reckon you'll find it linked somewhere on this page!) and they're an even-handed bunch.

It's about the car but really it's about the place. You've probably seen the Stelvio in a million photos and videos, but I think our videographer Mark Bramley really shows how mad this road is. And how cool the people who use it are you're ripping past them in a Ferrari over and over again.

I kept thinking the police would turn up any minute, but even if they did I reckon they'd just want a photo with the car and maybe a passenger ride up and down the Pass. Get right to the end of the video and I have an enormous crash. Maybe.
 
What was the 458 Spider like? F**king brilliant. I know Monkey's 'How Ferrari Spins' blog has stirred up loads of bad feeling on here about Ferrari and I think all this 'support crew' stuff for performance tests is ridiculous.

But for this video we picked up the 458 one morning from the factory, dropped it back the next night with nothing but a few calls asking where the hell we were when we returned it late. The car felt seriously quick but clearly didn't have Alonso's motor in the back.

You'll like the noise, I promise you that. 

Number of comments

No comments: