Perhaps the Ferrari 458 Speciale's most outstanding party trick arrives courtesy of its new SSC system, which stands for side slip control. It's basically a new setting within the now familiar manettino set up that allows you to go slightly sideways in the new car but with the ESP system still fully engaged.

It'll do its best to save you, in other words, if you push things too far by deploying too much power at the exit of a corner which is easy to do when there's 597bhp at 9000rpm beneath your right foot.

The system may supercar sound like little more than a clever version of traction control, but in reality it's a lot more sophisticated than that. And the results it can bring in terms of improving the fun factor while reducing the lap times of even the most competent drivers are not to be underestimated.

In Luca di Montezemolo's words - who drove the 2015 new car "many times during the development process" - SSC is the element that distinguishes the Speciale as one of the great Ferraris.

It works by effectively predicting what the optimum levels of tyre slip, steering angle, throttle position and engine revs might be at any given point in a corner, and then trimming back the engine revs and opening and closing the E-diff to deliver the most effective cornering posture. It's not predictive; there is no use of GPS tracking for example. Instead, the new cars monitors what it is doing every couple of milliseconds and then reacts accordingly.

In Race mode it won't allow any slip from the rear tyres whatsoever. But in "CT off" mode it will allow a fair bit of oversteer at the corner exit if it senses that you have the right amount of opposite lock applied, and that not too much throttle is being applied motorsia.com.

Posted by: semamore29 at 02:26 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 322 words, total size 2 kb.