Taking a look at the picture you will notice a few changes compared to a standard 458 Italia. First, the car in the pictures is lower and gets wider side skirts, a revised fascia, and hood pins on the hood. The exhaust system is also changed and there is a roll cage on the interior. The car seems to be in prototype stage as it looks unfinished and unpolished, but the intention is clearly there.
Stay tuned for more photos as we are sure they will be delivered to us sometime this week. Why is that? The Ferrari 599 GTO launch is this week so as the buzzing of journalists swarm Ferrari, we are sure they will snap a few great pics to dazzle us. Whether Ferrari will provide the opportunity to photograph the Challenge or the carparazzi snags the opportunity is still up in the air!
Another first for a Ferrari Challenge model is the adoption of the F1-Trac traction control system, the most sophisticated of its kind. Developed in-house by Ferrari, the F1-Trac system constantly monitors levels of grip for maximum high-performance road-holding. Two specific track-biased calibrations - wet and dry - have been developed for this application, with control logic and strategies derived from Ferrari's extensive racing experience in the F1 and GT championships. The F1-Trac is completely integrated with the E-Diff to guarantee maximum acceleration out of corners.
The required ABS, F1-Trac and E-Diff calibration settings are selected via the manettino on the steering wheel, the first time this solution has been adopted on a model developed for the Ferrari Challenge series. The driver can thus either chose from the WET or DRY configurations. In high grip conditions it is also possible to select CT-OFF to de-activate the F1-Trac traction control.
In the course of the intensive development sessions involved in honing the Ferrari 458 Challenge for the track, the engineers also managed to improve the car's lap time at Fiorano by two seconds over that of its predecessor, resulting in a new record of just 1'16.5". Equally impressive is the amount of lateral grip the new car generates - up to 1.6G.
