FERRARI CHALLENGE: New racecar revealed

The new Ferrari Challenge 488 was unveiled during a gala celebration at the Ferrari Finali Mondiali at Daytona International Speedway on Saturday evening.

The car will make its race debut in May 2017 when the three global Ferrari Challenge Championships begin in Europe, Asia and the United States. The series which began 25 years ago with the Ferrari 348 has employed a special edition of every mid-engined V8 Ferrari ever since. However, the 488 Challenge car represents a significant leap forward in race-bred technology, making this car closer to a pure racecar than modified street car.

Influenced significantly by technological innovations of Ferrari's 488 GT3 and GTE/LM versions, the 488 Challenge is 1 second faster than the 458 Challenge Evoluzione currently raced around Ferrari's short Fiorano test track, and is expected to be as much as 2.5 seconds faster around some of the longer circuits used in the series.

Much of the development centered around aerodynamics. The purpose-built front splitter, wheel arches and side skirts are heavily influenced by the advances made with the GT3 and GTE/LM versions. Moreover the direction of the road car's front radiators have been reversed to work with new air intakes and exits over the cars centerline whereby the heated air, along with other aero elements, can increase the aerodynamic downforce by as much as 20% over the road car while maintaining a similar drag coefficient.

The second area of focus is in driveability. Keeping in mind that this is a series intended for non-professional drivers, all 670 horsepower can now be deployed with more adaptability to the driver's style while maintaining a sufficient safety margin. Achieved by separating the driver aid functions into two separate "Manettinos," or control switches, drivers can now tune brake balance and differential settings separate from the traction control and engine mapping settings.

In the 458 Challenge Evoluzione (pictured above at Daytona in this weekend's Ferrari Challenge races), and all prior cars, each driver setting produced one combination or brake balance, differential setting and engine mapping. Testing at Monza revealed an average 11.6% improvement out of the reference bend, thanks to improved fine tuning of the driver aids.

Finally, in collaboration with wheel partner Motegi Racing and tire partner Pirelli, new wheels and tires that are an inch wider than found on the road car were developed specifically for the 488 Challenge in conjunction with the cars overall development.