Inside Ferrari: Unique Behind-the-Scenes Photography of the World's Greatest Motor Racing Team

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Remember, there’s also the option of specifying a wheel with in-set LEDs on the top that light up red-to-blue as the car reels in its red line rev limiter. Another haptic button, positioned on the left-hand side of the dashboard, adjusts the door mirrors. Traditional door handles are no longer part of the Ferrari interior landscape, exit now done by pushing a discreet button. In the front, the seats are comfortable and there’s a heavily sculpted dashboard with touches that retain a familiar Ferrari feel, including a steering wheel heavy on buttons and drive-mode selectors. Ergonomics are improved over the Ferrari Roma and 296, so it’s easier to scroll through a reduced number of screens. Sat-nav is by smartphone link only. Then there’s the mould production process. Today the sand moulds are made by machine, but it is intricate human skill that ensures perfect productions every time: once made (a process that involves blasting the sand with sulphur dioxide to strengthen it), a machinist works over each mould, marking defects, and cleaning burrs by hand. A mistake here could mean a component defect, deep within an engine at a later date, so attention to detail at this stage is crucial.

Driven by a desire to run his own show, Lyon started doing engines and gearboxes in a garage in the north-west London suburb of Northwood, because there was no room for anything bigger. Soon he moved to a slightly larger place that his brother owned, coining the name GTO Engineering.There’s no grille, as such, with the lower “shelf” doing much of the cooling work while the upper slit houses a forward camera and sensors. Normally on an installation lap there are little issues here and there, but today things were running smoothly. I could actually push a little bit in the car in corners and feel a few things." Independent rear-wheel steering (Ferrari has developed a system that can limit the angle of the inside rear wheel) along with an electronic rear differential and a two-geared power transfer unit sending torque to the front wheels really helps pivot the car through tight turns, and on hairpin-heavy mountain roads in the Dolomites the Purosangue genuinely felt like a car half its weight. On the other topics, the vision you have from outside the team is always a bit different, and as you know it has been very short notice for me and I have spent the last four weeks trying to understand what is happening at the team last year, but I won't draw any conclusions before the first event and we have to know each other before we take any action."

However, Vasseur is wary that the strength of Ferrari's rivals -- most notably Red Bull and former champions Mercedes -- means the team cannot afford to stop pushing in any area. He underlined the importance of all the team's departments making gains, again with the clear goal of delivering a title to the tifosi by the end of the year. Leclerc seems to understand this take, but from the other side of the coin, as it were. “I came here three years ago with all of my best friends,” he tells me, “mostly to party—and we had an incredible time. I love Vegas. Obviously we’re here now for a different reason—but the hype around the race is what makes it so special. It make it more fun.” Penelope Cruz co-stars in the movie as Laura Ferrari, Enzo's wife. Cruz is an Oscar winner ( Volver), who is working with Driver and Mann for the first time in this movie. Some of Cruz's most recent roles have included The 355, Parallel Mothers, Pain and Glory and Murder on the Orient Express.

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For the driver, it’s also not ideal having every piece of info housed on the main driver display, as it means compromises in terms of clarity — especially when it comes to using navigation as the route is crammed into a tiny space making it hard to follow. Enzo Ferrari considered the engine to be the heart of a car, and a V12 engine has always been the beating heart of Ferrari, so using the 812 Superfast-derived 6.5-litre unit (albeit with a bespoke intake and exhaust, with optimised cylinder heads and timing) in the Purosangue marries the marque’s thoroughbred tradition to a modern, arguably necessary, bodystyle.

The big difference, I would say, is the expectations are different, the pressure is different, but you can take that in a positive way. For sure the feeling and the mood around the team is different -- I think it is the only team where when you come to the factory at 7 a.m. you have people waiting for you outside of the gates. You can feel the motivation and the atmosphere around the team and it is a massive push for everyone." Charles Leclerc rolls out of the Fiorano garage in the Ferrari SF23. FerrariGilles had a will to win which was just incredible. He would overtake anybody in anything, all the time. He didn't care. I mean, that was the way he was, he just wouldn't let people get in his way. The wheel also contains the engine start button and the button for the suspension damper settings, which will operate in a similar way to the current 430 Scuderia. The manettino - the red switch on the right of the wheel - is also from the Scuderia, with that car’s five options It also means silky-smooth throttle response and sensational performance, of course: there’s 715bhp on tap, with 80 per cent of the maximum 528lb ft of torque available above 2,000rpm, and upwards of 480lb ft between 4,300rpm and 7,750rpm. That results in sensational pulling power over a wide rev band, and instant performance at any speed in any of the eight gears. Using a naturally-aspirated V12, with no electrification to be seen, is an interesting choice by Ferrari. One could see it as two fingers up to the environmentalists, but from Ferrari’s point of view it is what truly makes the Purosangue stand out from its competition. However, parts is a global business these days, explains Lyon. The Ferrari factory isn’t interested in making components for Colombo V12s any more, so GTO makes them instead. It can build you an entirely new engine, using new casting and ancillary components made in the UK and just like new.

Although some Ferrari designs are more successful than others, it’s very easy to wax lyrical about the way a new model looks. With the Purosangue, the job is harder because — and I’m just going on anecdotal evidence — there are some car enthusiasts out there who think it shouldn’t exist at all. But it does, so quite frankly they need to deal with it. And I probably shouldn’t mention this but one other (well-known) journalist we spoke to on the launch, who’d been driving the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT, said the German car felt like an elephant in comparison to the Ferrari. That says it all. Pricing and availability Extract from Jean Todt, Ferrari’s most successful team principal, “When we speak about the difference in perceptions between Ferrari from the inside and Ferrari from the outside, my experience developed over the years. But when I arrived, people had no faith in me because I was French; I had no experience in F1, so they thought, ‘Okay, he’s coming for one or two years, to make some money and leave.’ But then, over the years, they realized that I was focused because I was in the factory day and night with the team, and I was really putting in all the effort.Ferrari most likely knows that only a small percentage of the world can afford to own one of its models, so Ferrari World is its way of introducing others to the brand. Gilles would have been world champion that year I think, without any doubt,” he said. “The car was good enough, the engine was good enough and Ferrari was good enough to get him onto the podium often enough for him to have won the world championship. The best of everything Gordon Murray T.50 dynamic debut - report Driving Bentley's Blower continuation (video) Video: Revisiting the Jaguar I-Pace in Tokyo › More here... After the Renault challenge faded, they traded the lead several times. The Canadian believed they were putting on a show for the fans, and that Pironi would comply with a pre-race agreement and let him win. It was also a tight race on fuel consumption, and both drivers had to be mindful of that.