Ferrari F12berlinetta

Ferrari F12berlinetta

Ferrari hasn’t compromised one bit with its grand touring coupe, the F12berlinetta. Power comes from a front-mounted 6.3-liter V-12, mated to a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission and rear-wheel drive. Even with 730 horsepower, the F12berlinetta is designed to be one of Ferrari’s more comfortable cars, making it surprisingly MANAGEABLE on a day-to-day basis. Sure, it costs more than a house, but the metal-melting aria from that incredibly operatic engine? Priceless.

The front straight at VIR doesn’t usually tell you much. But in the case of the F12, that track section is highly revealing, about both you and the car.

Holding a 730-hp 6.3-liter V-12 wide open for 12 seconds of straightaway will either focus your vision or reduce you to a quivering space chimp. Keep the throttle open if you dare, and watch the little red dots at the top of the steering-wheel rim illuminate one by one as the machine vibrates harder toward the V-12’s 8250-rpm power peak. Tug the right paddle as the last red LED glows. The shift spasms through the car, and the F12 bawls toward its 157.4-mph peak speed. Now then, BRAKE!

There’s a slight kink in the straight, roughly at the start/finish line. It doesn’t amount to much in slower cars, where you won’t notice that the paving crew left a ripple in the asphalt as the car leans hard through the wide right bend. But burn through the kink at 149 mph in an F12 and that ripple becomes a railroad crossing. Compressing the suspension at speed makes it respond by bouncing back up equally hard. The tires go light, and, according to our test equipment, the F12 took a 40-foot skip across the pavement. Where’s my banana?

The F12 is so fast that the track’s divots, pockmarks, and lumps become obstacles. Entering the uphill esses at 139.9 mph, the scenery went blurry on us. Positioning the car perfectly into the first ess is critical; turn in too late or too early and the Ferrari becomes a very expensive lawn mower.

Concentrating this hard brings with it a sort of tunnel vision that’s broken only by the Ferrari leaping over the small hump where the esses transition from right to left. Another skip. Another unplanned flight in a $438,000 car.

Light steering helps mask the mass, and the carbon-ceramic brakes are strong enough to make you forget that the F12 weighs 3872 pounds. However, overconfidence in the brakes did lead to one off-track excursion that ended about 40 feet shy of the tire wall.

The tires on the F12 were Pilot Sport Cup 2s in sizes 10 millimeters wider than stock. Ferrari claims that this grippy, track-ready tire will be optional soon but couldn’t provide us with a price. We’d guess that they were worth a second or two at VIR. The tires have big stick and the Ferrari’s 12-cylinder heart is willing, but high speeds and g’s leave the soft, ride-friendly chassis pogo’ing. This Ferrari will go very quickly around a track, but it comes off a bit skittish and unwieldy when held on the edge and pushed beyond.

Of course, that also means a hard-driven F12 triggers a big physiological response, a speedball of adrenaline and endorphins that floods the bloodstream. A warm buzz ensues, muscles twitch, and reality sharpens. That’s the high of chasing down lap times in a V-12 Ferrari. More, please.