We tested the Ferrari 812 Superfast: 800 hp and heart attack performance for one of the best Ferraris in history

7:00 a.m. on December 7. Coincidentally, that day I turned 37 years old. Fate had wanted this year to have one of the best gifts that someone who is dedicated to this can receive. I was going to test the most powerful and fastest Ferrari V12 in history. Its name says it all, Ferrari 812 Superfast. Are you coming to walk this 800 hp beast?

I admit that when I received the communication from Maranello offering me their new jewel from the 7th to the 10th of December, I initially thought it was a joke in bad taste. After resting it in the cold I thought that maybe it was a fantastic fluke of fate.

We could say that this was going to be the first official Motorpasión test for a Ferrari. In some tire presentation we had driven a unit of the Cavallino, and I personally had driven some Ferrari before. 599 GTB, 458 Spider and the last one I drove was an F355 Berlinetta which, to tell you the truth, is so simple that it is in another galaxy if we compare it with our protagonist today.

V12 engines, the heart of the great Ferraris since 1947

The fact that the Ferrari 812 Superfast is a V12 is key, not only because the cars with this engine architecture are the most glorious in the Maranello house's product portfolio, but because it was precisely a V12 engine that encouraged the first Ferrari of history 71 years ago in 1947.

By definition, the 812 Superfast is a Berlinetta Grand Tourer, one of those GT architecture sports cars designed to offer its owners the fastest and most comfortable way to move from their vacation home in the mountains to their company headquarters. in the big city, always being able to make a run through his favorite circuit to set fastest laps.

It mounts a huge naturally aspirated 6.5 V12 engine in the front longitudinal position, capable of delivering 800 hp when turning at 8,500 RPM, and 718 Nm at 7,000 RPM. That brutal power is transmitted only to the rear axle, which is a challenge at the development level. Passing 800 hp to the asphalt is not an easy task even for a Formula 1 car, but Maranello's new toy manages it.

It is therefore the most powerful series car ever made by Ferrari, only surpassed by the very exclusive V12 with a mid-position engine manufactured in very limited editions, such as the LaFerrari or the Enzo.

Compared to an F12berlinetta or its immediate predecessor, which we could consider the F12tdf, the 812 Superfast has 60 more horsepower, 80% more torque at 3,500 RPM and, above all, this increase in power is achieved by maintaining smoothness and the absence of vibrations in the engine. really outstanding block.

Logically in these times, in which even naturally aspirated Ferrari V12s are in the crosshairs of anti-pollution regulations, the challenge of creating a car with such an engine was not easy.

Maranello engineers increased the block displacement of the F12berlinetta, making it fatter from 6.2 to 6.5 litres. They also worked on the intake system to ensure that more air entered the engine and that this allowed this block called to mark a before and after in the history of Ferrari to breathe at full capacity.

Why? First, because never before had a ratio of 123 hp/litre been achieved in a front-atmospheric V12. On the other hand, because rumors suggest that this could be the last atmospheric V12 to come out of the Italian brand's headquarters for a street car, since it seems that they have reached the natural limit to be able to comply with basic anti-pollution regulations.

Perhaps all this, together with the fact that this 812 Superfast is possibly the model with a more personal Ferrari design in the last decade, makes the Superfast not just another Ferrari. It is one of those Ferraris that everyone who can should have in their garage.

Other technical solutions never seen at Ferrari

If there is something that defines Ferrari, beyond its aura of exclusivity, it is the technique they apply to their cars. Technical developments have evolved in parallel to how their racing cars have, led by Formula 1 single-seaters and followed by the thousands of track cars they build each year.

This Ferrari is the most advanced on the market and in the history of Ferrari in series cars for the street. It incorporates some solutions never seen before in a Ferrari, such as the electric steering or the directional rear axle, with the rear wheels enabled to turn in the same direction or in the opposite direction to the front ones depending on the circumstances.

Work has been done on many other aspects, such as the 7-speed dual-clutch gearbox, which in addition to operating absolutely instantaneously, as if it were a Formula 1 car, now has ratios 6% shorter than in the F12 Berlinetta. It is 30% faster both when going up and down gears. Simply huge.

The different modes of the Manettino have also been recalibrated and a lot of work has been done on the exhaust manifold system from 6 to 1, to make the 812 Superfast not only a machine that impresses on paper, but also a machine that will make anyone fall in love. hear it from within or from without.

The glory every morning, the sound of atmospheric V12

This is all very well but it's just data, and data is cold. So it's best to sit in the driver's seat and start the beast, which is done by pressing the red button integrated into the steering wheel, right next to the Manettino.

My wife has way too many rules about how to cut brownies.

— WarNev3rChanges Thu May 28 01:50:22 +0000 2020

Then the V12 engine comes to life and what you hear is pure glory. I don't know how the angels will sing, but I don't want to hear them if I can hear this sound every morning instead. In the cold, with so much smoke billowing out of the four rear exhaust outlets that a Greenpeace activist could have a heart attack, the sound of the 812 Superfast at high idle is otherworldly.

I let it warm up inside the Santogal Dealership, the official Ferrari dealer in Madrid, and soon I hit the road. It was still 9:15 in the morning, the asphalt was soaked, the temperature did not exceed 5 degrees and I had a tingling in my stomach along with a certain nervousness about what awaited me with the 812.

The car was fitted with winter tyres, logical coming from northern Italy where this type of compound is mandatory on all cars for much of the year. As a precaution, to circulate in those initial bars through the morning jam, I select the Wet mode of the Manettino.

I put my foot down on the accelerator as I move away from Madrid at the same time that the sunlight is rising and with it the degrees of ambient temperature, creating the perfect setting to go in search of a beautiful road on which to photograph it and, incidentally, take unleash the cavalry.

Even in that mode in which the power delivery, the genius, the character and the bad milk should be subjected to the most restrictive electronics, the 812 Superfast is capable of drawing smiles. It doesn't go numb or sleepy like other Ferraris of yesteryear, like the F430.

In second and third, if you hit the accelerator hard, it is true that it does not offer an instant response capable of sticking you to the seat and leaving the tires tattooed on the asphalt, but as soon as it exceeds 3,000 RPM it does offer more than enough force to take you to higher rates than those allowed in our country. And it does it until reaching the distant 9,000 RPM.

On the highway, the 812 Superfast soon brings out its Grand Tourer berlinetta face, delighting us with a truly surprising ride quality, ride comfort and absence of noise.

It is so comfortable and quiet that you can easily make any trip in it without fear of arriving with a tired back or having to ask for an Ibuprofen at your destination due to the headache caused by the noise. And your companion will be able to see the car's information at all times on a screen located in front of the passenger seat, a solution that only Ferrari offers and that seems great to me.

Layout of controls to be adapted to

I take advantage of those initial bars to familiarize myself with the many controls of the car, because later when we start to get the most out of it, there will be no time to think about where that switch was that activated the 'Sport' mode. The controls that make up the dashboard, in shape and horizontal lines, are arranged in order... Well, let's just say that they are simply arranged, and that's it.

The dashboard is dominated by a central clock with a yellow background, scaled to mark the red zone at 9,000 RPM. On the sides, two digital screens offer us a lot of information. Each one of them is handled with a rotary control, as if it were the thread of the volume of a car radio, which to tell the truth have a touch (and a clearance) quite similar to those of a Fiat Tipo car radio. Do not look for the highest quality of fit and finish, because you will not find it.

What you will find is a lot of information to have well monitored in the car at all times. On the left screen you can check from the pressure and temperature of the tread of each tire to the speed, the outside temperature, or the status of the fuel tank, among many others.

On the right screen, we find a system made up of seven fairly common menus (phone, radio, media, navigation, etc.) that end in a last category called Telemetry which, as its name suggests, is the car's real telemetry. A lot of information can be displayed indistinctly on one screen or another, so it's just a matter of customizing the information to each one's taste to have control of the car, at least in terms of figures, at all times.

A full stop deserves the steering wheel, an iconic piece in every self-respecting Ferrari. It has many controls integrated into it, from the turn signals that can be operated from the front or from behind with the tips of the fingers, to the buttons to answer and hang up calls, suspension hardness selection control, high or low beams and even the speed of the front windshield wiper.

Everything perfectly integrated so you don't have to take your eyes off the road. The only buttons that are not there are the three that are arranged on a molding that separates both front seats. There the R indicates that you activate the reverse gear, the N the neutral point and the Launch indicates that the rocket is ready to take off.

Ready to take advantage of the 800 CV

After a series of static photos, in which Javier Álvarez has been able to capture the essence of this 812 Superfast in Giallo Modena color, and with the sun high up heating the asphalt, the most awaited moment arrives. It's time to get the most out of the 800 hp of this beast.

Logically, taking full advantage of such a level of cavalry is not easy. Simply, you would need a very fast, big and wide track or an airport runway closed exclusively for you to get the most out of this beast. But since we didn't have either, we decided to take it to one of our favorite mountain passes.

The last time he had passed through there was behind the wheel of the Porsche 911 GT3, so the reference was not exactly bad. I turn the Manettino to Sport mode (there is no 'normal', it goes from 'Wet' to 'Sport') and I feel as if the car does something similar to when you put on freshly washed pants, as if it adjusts to the clothes , as if he were more tense, more prepared to offer the best of himself.

And boy, does he offer it. Going up the first very narrow but quite straight mountain pass, with perfect visibility to know if a car was coming in the opposite direction, I realize that it is enough to mistreat a few tenths of a second on the accelerator so that, literally, the straight sections disappear and you are steadily, and in much less time than expected, over the next curve.

The power that it delivers and how well it offers it is enormous, making it all a matter of how loving we are with the throttle. If we play with it up to the middle of the route, it is fast, if we take it to 80% it is fleeting, and if we dare to go full throttle for more than 1.5 seconds, we are surely circulating faster than what the subconscious recommends.

No matter how steep the slope, in this car you will always have twice the force needed to climb at rocket speed. Lap uploads are absolutely instant. The compression ratio is 13.6:1. And best of all, even when you step on the throttle, the rear wheels don't seem to have a very marked tendency to skid.

That the engine was going to be glorious was something that already presupposed having a naturally aspirated 6.5 V12 with 800 hp under the hood, but what it did not suppose is that the set was going to offer such a sensation of agility. With 4.65 meters long and 1,525 kilos of curb weight, and especially after having shown me on the highway that it is a fantastic GT, I did not expect the 812 Superfast to delight me with such a dose of agility.

It is a delight to brake it before reaching the curve, which is taken care of by the powerful Brembo Extreme Design brake team that it shares with the LaFerrari and that allows braking to be accelerated to unsuspected limits, helped by the high-performance ABS 9.1. One after another I was braking more and more and I admit that I never felt I was close to the limit. The only thing that told me that I was getting close were the double indicators, which activate automatically when the deceleration is very pronounced.

At that point, and with the car already stabilized before starting the line at the apex of the curve, simply mark the point of contact with the electronic steering and the car will literally go where you want to go with pinpoint precision. .

The rear axle makes the wheels turn in the opposite direction to the front ones, helping to give you the feeling that more than in an 812 Superfast, you are behind the wheel of a kart, fast, agile, precise and fast like few others. At first, in the first corners, something strange is perceived because it seems that the rear, where 53% of the car's weight is, is not seated, but everything is the effect of that active rear axle.

You soon realize that once the car has entered the corner, there is no one to move it and it will quickly be ready for whatever comes. And what usually comes at this time is another straight that will devour which hungry piranha in search of the next curve.

The magic of aerodynamics, the faster the better

The speed of passage through the fast curves is literally heavenly. The poise of the whole thanks to the aerodynamic development in the wind tunnel, is one of the most outstanding aspects. It has active mobile elements, some that are activated mechanically automatically and others that, due to the force of the wind when you go at the indicated speed, move to offer maximum support.

It is one of those cars in which once you have gained confidence you realize that it goes better and closer to the asphalt the faster you drive, creating that magical relationship that you only feel in authentic supercars designed to offer the best of itself at all times. themselves.

The steering, which had an extremely soft touch at a standstill to facilitate parking maneuvers, offers an exquisite touch when you are going at the pace and looking for that minute of what is happening under the front axle, which transmits much more information than I expected. Just in case the relationship between you is not completely fluid, it has an electronic steering system that warns us when we are approaching the limit of lateral grip and helps with corrections.

But all this would make no sense if the car, in turn, was not capable of correctly transmitting all that power to the asphalt. Perhaps the traction capacity is the aspect that surprised me the most. Unless we cause a skid that can only be glimpsed in the 'Race' mode of the 5 available, the car will be able to offer the necessary grip at the exit of the curves to catapult us towards the next turn.

Auto Stroke Reductions

I admit that I would have spent the whole day doing that stretch of perfect asphalt, absolute visibility and fast curves linked to those that followed others of 180 degrees. What all day, all my life! Hearing the sound of the V12 engine revving up with unprecedented ardor, going faster and faster through that curve that seemed almost straight but at this rate is tighter than it seems. Everything is addictive.

In this car, despite having many electronic elements to make life easier, the role of the driver is essential. It is a car that requires hands and concentration to drive fast, and not because it makes things complicated if you push it, but because everything happens very quickly and a mistake can be very expensive.

So that you only have to worry about enjoying yourself, it has some assistances that once you try them, you won't want to give them up. This is the case of the system that automatically downshifts during the most intense braking. It is enough that while we press the brake we have activated the gear lever that reduces gears and the car autonomously and infinitely better than I would do it, it lowers one gear after another, also delighting us with the unique sounds of the revolutions to balance between one march and the other.

Inevitably, when I go through some points on the road, and especially when I do it especially fast, I can't stop thinking about how I would have passed there in the Porsche 911 GT3, which was my coolest reference, and I admit that on many occasions I think that I was doing quite a bit quicker in this car than in the German.

Without measuring times against the stopwatch and only with the impressions of my body and brain, I think I'm not wrong if I tell you that on country roads that combine fast and slow curves in equal parts, this car is capable of keeping up with everything a GT3, and that is not something that many can say.

And if the road is one of those old national roads, nowadays almost deserted despite its double lanes on the steepest climbs, I don't think there are more than five cars for sale today capable of keeping it at bay, and we're talking about the great supercars of the moment and perhaps the Porsche 911 GT2 RS. Not one more.

Ferrari 812 Superfast: our score

It is said that the Ferrari 812 Superfast will be the last naturally aspirated Ferrari V12. If true, in the future we may still have Ferraris with turbocharged V12 engines, but they won't have the essence of it. Having enjoyed it for three days, I can assure you that the 812 Superfast is one of the best supercars on the market. We knew it was going to be fast, it doesn't have 800 hp for anything, but we didn't expect it to be as agile and comfortable as it is.

The combination of the most powerful naturally aspirated V12 engine in history with other modern technical solutions, such as electronic steering or the active rear axle, together make the Ferrari 812 Superfast one of the great Ferraris in history. Its price is 339,000 euros, and those who can afford it know that they will have one of those cars that every Ferrari driver should have in their garage. Grace.

Data sheet

The car for this test has been loaned by Ferrari. For more information, consult our guide to relationships with companies

Photography | Javier Alvarez