Ferrari 296 Speciale unveiled: The Prancing Horse’s fastest, ‘most extreme’ car yet
Ferrari’s latest and greatest supercar promises to take performance to the next level but you’ll have to jump through serious hoops to get one.
Common rule of thumb for extreme track-focused supercars is the uglier they are the faster they are when hot lapping.
Function over form dominates and if engineers can get away with bolting a wing onto the back of a handsome coupe, you can bet they’ll screw on the biggest, ugliest appendage they can find in pursuit of precious downforce.
So you might expect the latest, most extreme 648kW Ferrari 296 Special to have fallen from the very top of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.
Except in the flesh the lighter, more powerful hard-core 296 is still somehow as handsome as ever and, if anything, benefits from all the enhancements required to efficiently manage the air around its svelte body to boost high-speed stability needed for hot lapping.
There’s a tweaked nose and a revised lower front bumper that sports larger air intakes.
Aerodynamicists have also added a scalloped bonnet that now packages a new S-duct-style intake that both reduces dive under braking and then does the opposite and reduces lift under acceleration.
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At the rear, Ferrari has pinched the fender flares from the 296 Challenge racer but resisted the temptation to borrow its big wing.
Sure, some might miss the racer-for the road look, but Ferrari claim that the 296 Speciale produces 435kg of downforce at 250km/h – 20 per cent more than the standard car, although that figure is a long way off the incredible 860kg maximum the 911 GT3 RS can muster.
The modest boost is easy to explain, says Ferrari.
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If you want to go fast on track feel free to buy one of our race cars, but if you want to have fun behind the wheel you’ll want the 296.
Originally rumoured to ditch its electrification in pursuit of maximum kilo-cutting, the 296 Speciale keeps its ultra-compact plug-in hybrid twin-turbo 3.0-litre V6 but winds up power to a dizzying 648kW.
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The power comes from new internals lifted from both the inbound F80 hypercar and Prancing Horse’s two-time Le Mans-winning 499P racer.
There’s also tweaks to the electric motor that now pushes out 132kW and 315Nm and, combined with a 7.45kWh battery, can still drive the Ferrari in near-silent EV mode at speeds of up to 135km/h for 25km.
Off the line from 0-100km/h the hotter 296 takes just 2.8 seconds – 0.1sec faster than the standard car, while 0-200km/h is dispensed in seven seconds flat.
Emphasising the sense of thrust is the faster-shifting eight-speed dual-clutch transmission, the fact that all its power is channelled to the road via the rear wheels and the fact that engineers have carved away 60kg.
Improving the way the 296 drives on road and track, engineers have revised the suspension and introduced stiffer springs and new trick damper that are said to reduce roll by 13 per cent which leads to 4 per cent harder cornering.
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That might sound hard to get your head around.
But all that extra power, less weight and new-found downforce the 296 Speciale is now faster round Ferrari’s Fiorano home circuit than any modern Ferrari you care to name, including the LaFerrari, with it posting an identical time to the near million-dollar SF90 hypercar.
Which brings us to the thorny issue of cost and availability.
On sale in the first quarter of next year in both coupe and roadster body styles we think the Ferrari 296 Speciale will be priced from $700,000 (plus on-roads) for the Berlinetta coupe and $800,000 for the Aperta droptop – a huge sum of money but a significant saving over an SF90.
The problem is, despite Ferrari not capping volumes, the famous Italian car brand says to be eligible to buy you first need to currently own a Ferrari and the next is you need to have already built a relationship with your local dealer.
So unless you have current 296, Roma or SF90 tucked away in your garage and are godfather to the dealer principle’s firstborn even if you have the cash, odds are, you’ll still miss out on what could be the fastest, most capable and prettiest supercars money can buy.
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