There hasn’t been a brand new Ferrari highway automobile inbuilt not less than a decade that is price caring about, however the firm’s latest rent desires to vary that. Seven-time F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton joined Scuderia Ferrari for the 2025 season, and he is already trying to make the race group’s mother or father firm higher. Saturday’s dash race winner and Sunday’s Grand Prix disqualified steered to Motorsport that he’d prefer to design his personal Ferrari supercar, and based mostly on his recommendations, it might be an actual banger. The model’s iconic Eighties hypercar, the twin-turbocharged V8 carbon-fiber monster F40, is Hamilton’s baseline from which to construct. He hopes to name the automobile F44, in a nod to his long-serving F1 race quantity. It is stuff like this that makes Hamilton the G.O.A.T. past any shadow of a doubt.
Hamilton entered his tenure at Ferrari with an iconic picture outdoors Enzo Ferrari’s residence standing subsequent to the legendary F40, maybe already setting his plan into movement. “Baseline of an F40, with the precise stick shift. That is what I am gonna work on for the subsequent few years,” stated Hamilton. Ferrari has not produced a automobile with a handbook transmission because the California in 2012, and hasn’t construct automobile with a handbook transmission because the F430 ended manufacturing in 2009. It would not be not possible for Ferrari to supply a handbook once more, or just crib one from Tremec, and the demand for a low-volume handbook hypercar will surely exceed provide. My prediction is that such a automobile, have been it constructed, could be an immediate basic collectible.
What’s an F40, once more? Asking for a pal
Constructed between 1987 and 1992 the Ferrari F40 will most likely at all times be the automobile Maranello is most and greatest identified for. Whereas simply 1,315 vehicles have been constructed initially, the automobile was constructed to fulfill the FIA Group B racing homologation and compete on even footing with Porsche’s 959, however did not make manufacturing by the point Group B was deleted. There was no level in throwing away the engineering behind the Group B race automobile, regardless of there being nowhere to race the factor, so the engineers did the naked minimal to show the race automobile right into a highway automobile and promote them to the general public. A high-revving 2.9-liter V8 with a pair of turbos and a pair of intercoolers, the three,000-ish-pound automobile was greater than fast sufficient with 471 horsepower on faucet. If Lewis Hamilton might get Ferrari to supply a principally analog automobile with a weight even shut to three,000 kilos within the subsequent 5 years with three pedals and a shift-it-yourself gearbox, I would be prepared to declare him the best human being on the planet in perpetuity.
Neglect the F1 World Championship, this needs to be Ferrari’s primary precedence.
