Ferrari F80

Regarding the F80 and the Valkyrie lap times, both what I wrote and others also wrote are mere assumptions and nothing more than that. Regarding lap times, the only true information that exists about the two cars is: The F80 Fiorano’s lap time is 1:15.30 and theValkyrie road version Silverstone’s lap time is 1:56.42.
The only way to dispel these lap times doubts is to place the two cars side by side on a circuit but for obvious reasons, this will never happen at Fiorano.

 

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Spectacular presence on the road

 

Typical reply. If someone wants to buy a race winning engine, that person should just buy the exact car with that "race winning" engine instead. Meaning buy the exact LeMans winning car or the trackday version of that car.

Look if you don't like the tourbillion that is fine. But remember that the F80 looks ugly as well as it looks like a smooth soap bar in the middle with a lego body slapped in both ends.

 

Oh god, you really made me laugh and now I can't unsee it!

 

I believe that this is the maximum permissible weight, as quoted for all cars.

Interesting thing what that engineer said, but it just doesn't compute and I believe that it was a misunderstanding. The KERS system works in tandem with the ICE, not independently from it.

 

Remember that is just your own personal opinion and not a universal truth.

 

Excellent analysis, I agree with your overall statement.
Just a couple of questions/observations:

• When and where the 'same driver, same track, same day' LMP2 vs AMR Pro comparison happened? Can you share more details on that? It's really interesting info. BTW, was the comparison done with a latest-gen LMP2? Because those machines have been aerodinamically nerfed in recent years to keep them slower than the new LMH class (which in turn is fairly slower than what peak LMP1-Hs used to be). If so, even more so that wouldn't look good for the AMR Pro. That car is based on a LMP chassis, with LMP-grade Michelin slicks, 1000 bhp and a downforce-to-weight ratio which (at least on paper) should not be that far from that of a 2020 DPi prototype. Ok, DPis were usually slightly slower than unrestricted LMP2 machines of the same era in terms of lap-times, so if we go by that it is expected for the AMR Pro to trail behind in lateral grip in the corners (which is were time is gained on the racing track). However its power advantage is massive, so under not that much different chassis/aero/tyres conditions I would have expected the AMR Pro to be able to mostly compensate that deficit. Hence why your quote is really interesting and I would really appreciate if you could provide more details on that.
• I wouldn't really consider the quoted Fiorano lap times for Ferrari road cars as an exact numeric source which could be trusted down to the single tenth for this kind of comparisons. They are more of a marketing concept to tell people/media where a specific car is going to be placed in the range/portfolio in terms of relative performance. As an example of this, I really hope that nobody truly believes that a 296 GTB is not faster on track than a F12 TDF....
• Thank you for the screenshot with the 499P Modificata Fiorano lap time. Was a customer driving it? If so, that still is not a fully representative time because, with all due respect, the car could be faster with a Pro at the wheel. Besides, on paper the 499P Modificata has technically everything to be faster on track than its LMH counterpart (no BoP, no ballast, more power and permanent all-wheel drive), only concern would be its Pirelli tyres. Albeit being wider at the front compared to the Michelin slicks of the LMH car (so providing on paper increased front-end grip), they are specifically designed for being exploitable by gentleman drivers. That could on practice being a severe limitation for the performance of the car compared to the race-spec LMH slicks, as we all know that tyres are the most important factor when speaking about high-performance and race cars. That, and the suspensions setup of course.

Moreover, about the road legal Valkyrie, that car sadly turned out to be not that special at all, at least compared to what was promised at the time.
The car is overweight and it's lacking in what should have been its biggest strength, i.e. cornering performance.
That's because the car runs on standard Porsche-spec CUP 2s which cannot handle the weight+theoretical downforce loads the Valkyrie would be capable to generate, simply because they were not designed for this task.
This is frankly absurd, to design a car like that and not even thinking about creating bespoke tyres...
Hence why its downforce appears to have actually been fairly reduced compared to original claims. In the end, it appears that its peak downforce-to-weight ratio while cornering is no more than something about 0.5. Nothing spectacular and indeed a value which is miles away from that of any LMP car (to whom, remember, the Valkyrie was compared multiple times and, to some extent, somehow still is by some media guys...).
In fact, its Silverstone lap time is equal to that of a GT3 in qualifying. Considering how much faster the Valkyrie is down the straights compared to restricted 500 PS GT3 race cars, in the end it tells you everything also about how actually slow it is in the corners (compared to original claims and to what was promised at the time of its design release).
On the flip side, the Valkyrie still comes with race-car (un)worthy levels of overall reliability, maintenance costs and usability on the road.

Much more than the Valkyrie, I would consider the Praga Bohema to be the real benchmark of road cars performance on track.
And the fact that the F80 is (at least on paper) capable to generate 150 kg more of downforce (at the same speed) than the Bohema (which is something more akin to a full sport-prototype than a road sportcar in terms of proportions, cockpit design, front surface area and on-board space) is an incredible engineering feat from Ferrari.
Sure the F80 is much heavier (500+ kg, which is an insane amount when speaking about potentially lost track performance), but its 499P-derived AWD system, independent motored suspensions and predicted power delivery by means of E-turbos and MGU units, should all combined provide very high levels of mechanical grip and efficiency in putting the power down on track.

 

I have to disagree. Whilst the initial reports of LMP2 performance were always unrealistic, the road going Valkyrie is an amazing machine, decimating lap records left and right. Being quicker than GT3 race cars is no small feat. Being more than 10 seconds quicker than the Manthay Racing GT2 RS put the Valkyrie on a totally different plane of performance. That is the difference between an F1 and and an F3 race car. If the F80 is just as quick, it will be an amazing accomplishment. No other road car comes close to these two. The Praga you mentioned is just a road legalised track car and I doubt it will be as quick as these two.

 

My photo, last thursday
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Very nice picture. And F80 looking stunning on road !

 

It looks magnificent. I’ve started to think it looks better with all alloy wheels instead of the coloured centre carbon wheels.

 

Actually, Initial reports about Valkyrie performance were even more bombastic than that one.
Let me recap few of them:

- 2016: "Projected performance in line with that of today's LMP1"
- 2017: "A 2016 race trimmed F1 car, the [Valkyrie] in its track trim will be faster."
- 2020: "[Valkyrie on Cup 2s] will be faster than an LMP2 car." --> Here is the one related to LMP2, as you can see it was 2020 already, many years after announcement of the car
- 2024: "Aston Martin Valkyrie’s ability to pull more than 3.3 g in the bends – three times the lateral acceleration offered by most high performance road cars."

The last one is the most incredible, because then you go and have a look at the released Silverstone lap time (exactly in 2024 at the time of that statement) and you see that in the hands of Turner (a pro driver) the Valkyrie takes Copse at a minimum indicated speed of 164 km/h.
Just for reference, a "mere" 992 GT3 RS takes it at 162 km/h, just 2 km/h shy of the Valkyrie.
So just forget about those claims, the Valkyrie is actually under-performing even in absolute terms, so much so that a 992 GT3 RS can take Copse basically as fast, at a fraction of the price, costs, reliability issues and while providing far greater road comfort and usability.

Breaking records left and right?
Where exactly?
Basically just at Silverstone and Bahrain tracks, which are layouts with very long straights that favor cars with +1000 bhp like the Valkyrie.
Despite this, in Bahrain the Valkyrie is 4 tenth slower than a supposed GT3 lap record, so in a more conventional track layout with far less straights the Valkyrie would get dusted by a GT3 race car.
In fact, during the registered Bahrain lap time it pulled 1.55 G max in the corners, a value not even that great for road legal car standards, let alone compared to what race cars can do.
And at Silverstone, that's likely the best case scenario that you'll ever see for the Valkyrie, because:

1) The track with its long straights just suits the Valkyrie high power output
2) Car was tested there by AM for years and with thousands of kilometers covered, so no way to find a better setup optimization than for that track
3) Pro driver Turner was behind the wheels, good luck in finding journos and/or customers as competent as him in terms of driving skills

In the end, all of this is because the Valkyrie simply technically underachieved, even compared to the least outrageous promises among all those that were given during the years about its theoretical performance.
It likely weighs > 1400 kg under real road conditions, downforce in Track mode is limited to 750 kg in the corners from 220 km/h onwards (as per SportAuto source, if somebody can debunk this I am eager to listen), making its downforce-to-weight ratio at track-relevant speeds simply irrelevant by race car standards.
And most of this is due to the fact that it doesn't have bespoke tyres, and it so must run on general N0 Porsche samples which are far from being optimized for the Valkyrie technical package.

More in general, I would agree that being capable to match GT3 race cars lap times would be an exceptional good feature for a road legal car, but for the Valkyrie it does not qualify to be even the bare minimum.
Not after years full of stellar claims and promises and not if you consider how compromised, potentially unreliable, costly to service and maintain the Valkyrie is as a road legal car. And look, surely this would have been a fair price to pay in exchange for otherworldly performance, which at the end of the day however never really materialized.
In fact, to add insult to injury, even the AMG One proved to be capable to match and/or be extremely close to GT3 race car lap times on different tracks (like at the Hockenheimring GP, for example).
In the end, AMG One and Valkyrie appear to perform very similar on track, another proof of how hardly the Valkyrie missed its targets because when technical specifications of both projects were announced years ago, it was clear that the Valkyrie should have been far ahead in terms of potential performance.

PS: a high-end F1 car (2017-2021 or 2024, just to give few examples) is much more than 10 seconds per lap faster than a F3. On tracks like Silverstone or Spa, there are more than 10 seconds per lap between F1 and F2, while between F1 and F3 the gap can be close to 20 seconds per lap.

As for the Bohema, I disagree.
Ironically, the car will likely feature superior creature confort than the Valkyrie: for example, it won't drill your ears and/or destroy your spine (engine is not directly mounted to the chassis).
It will also likely be far more reliable, without hybrid system, heavy adaptive suspensions and with its GTR-derived twin-turbo V6.
The car is simple, nimble, privy of useless excess.
It boasts 900 kg of downforce at 250 km/h on a vehicle mass of 982 kg, boasting a downforce-to-weight ratio (which is what ultimately matters in terms of track performance) far ahead of that of the Valkyrie.
On the track, less is more and a 982 kg weight means that you won't overheat brakes or hardware, you won't destroy tyres after one lap and so - ultimately - means constant repetition of performance.
With 700 bhp over 982 kg, even its power-to-weight ratio is not that far off at all compared to that of the Valkyrie.
Unlike AMG One or the F80, the Valkyrie does not even have AWD and torque vectoring for compensating most of these shortcomings.

Finally, regarding the F80, its target must be the AMG One.
The philosophy of both cars is the same, but the F80 is a significantly newer project which - at least on paper - should come with more advanced specs in terms of weight, power, downforce and suspensions.
There are no excuses for it not to at least match (or even surpass) the performance of the AMG One, and the car will even be a greater success and testament of Ferrari's engineering capabilities if it will provide such level of performance while also offering better reliability and services compared to the One (which is also a very compromised road car by this point of view, not on Valkyrie levels but not that far either. Just think for example to the required cold startup procedure with pre-heating).

 

The GMA cars stand out so much compared to all this hoopla. Let’s a sports car be a sports car please…… these things are just too large, and too unusable at this juncture. Let’s go backwards to go forwards.

 

how far off a race car is the XX versions? I was under the impression that they were full race cars but with just slightly more forgiving suspension/geo/camber settings

also agree fully that if the f80 matches the valks lap times than it's a huge embarassment and failure for the valk - although I think it's mostly insane they didn't develop a tyre for it as there's so much more in the car that's restricted by the current rubber

 

Spec matters, again! I like the rear spoiler in carbon, which is an option, balances out the front black piece, which you can also order in carbon.


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Great color!

 

Stunning.

 

The 360 GT2 has been mentioned here for its Fiorano lap time of 1:15.00 lower than the F80's 1:15.30. But how is it possible that a car with technology that is more than 20 years old and has around 540 hp can be faster at Fiorano than the modern most powerful Ferrari ever built?

In a simplistic way, I will make reference to some aspects that may be crucial in the performance of the 360 GT2.

The first aspect has to do with the weight, which in the case of the 360 GT2 is low, around 1100 kg, and even so, much higher than the minimum 878 kg of the Le Mans LP1s. Lower weight makes an absolutely staggering difference to tracking performance, especially if that weight is ballasted in optimized locations. It allows braking much later, carry much more speed through corners, adjust cornering position with faster responses and easily clip any apex and turn with much more agility.
When the Ferrari 430 Scuderia was launched a factory engineer is quoted as saying that a weight reduction of 80kg (176lbs) shaved 0.8sec off the car's Fiorano time (1min 25sec total).

The second aspect has to do with the tires and in this regard there was someone who experimented timing a 2020 Hyundai i30 N (280 hp) on the track using different types of Pirelli tires. The results can be seen in the table below and show that the lap time difference between the P Zeros PZ4 and the Slicks DHB is more than 6 seconds. Tires are extremely important on lap time and the one achieved at Fiorano by the 360 GT2 was obtained with Slicks. However, the Slicks of twenty years ago were much less efficient than those of today.

Variables such as suspension settings and aerodynamics can also significantly impact lap times and I'm sure all these aspects have been meticulously tuned in the 360 GT2.

Others will probably be able to explain much better this 360 GT2 feat.








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@Keen The lack of bespoke tyres for the Valkyrie is indeed a hindrance, but even on off the shelf tyres, being 10 seconds quicker than a track optimised GT2 RS is a mighty feat. The performance can further improve on the new Trofeo RS, provided that it becomes available in the required sizes.

 

Nice piece and awesome car. But that noise, it would be unbearable after a very short while. And putting headphones on to drive it?! It really undermines the car in my opinion. It is not a track car, it is still a road car. It has an open roof! So why be so compromised? Could they not have quietened the roadster down a little and perhaps allowed a little more room? What an awesome car that would have been. Still possessing all the attributes of a very extreme hypercar (maybe the most extreme, it’s either that or the AMG One) but able to enjoy that open roof and lovely noise at a level that doesn’t need cans on your head and a stretch wire out the back. It has to be a fail. An astonishingly beautiful and brilliant car. But still a fail. I predict it and the One will be the lowest mile-per-car hypercar fleet from the current crop, by a stretch.

 

I don´t understand why they went so extreme. Some sound insulation and bigger doors wouldn´t waste the car. I suppose Newey was in the same obsessive mood than he was when designed that McLaren that never was raced.

 

Which is funny either is that he added in an interview that his car was really friendly and usable..