Article: I took on the fastest man on the Dragon with a Ferrari 458 Speciale
 

Greeting Fellow FD Members!

In honor of DGRR 2018, registration currently open btw, I wanted to share this article from Road & Track. It is titled, "I took on the fastest man on the Dragon with a 458 Speciale". What car beat the 458 Speciale? The article answers that question!

I took on the fastest man on the Dragon with a 458 Speciale

Cheers,
George

Good read! thank you for the share

Goes to show you how relevant these cars have remained. Almost made me miss my old set up, almost :)

I saw recent Hot Versions have Corvette Grand Sport and Corvette ZR1 in two different episodes on the "touge challenge" Gunma Cycle Center.

Will be interesting to see how they measure up to the FDs (usual touge moster- fastest).

From previews it sounds like Keiichi liked how GM finally took out the Miata like ultra soft suspension of the 'vettes and put in something more controlled (along with driver aids for those who need them) in the C7 platform.

Good stuff. Few things that stood out to me. Gravity Cavity, which is a super fun part of the road, if you don't have anyone in front on you. Mile marker 6, this is where the wife's FD died because the wheels rubbed the harness and we spend several hours troubleshooting and had to tow it back to the cabin and finally driving the dragon at night which puts you in a total trance as you are just reacting to what is directly in front of you. Can't wait to get back there in April.

In the last sentence of the article, what does this mean "The mistake I'd secretly hoped to hear never happened."

Author was hoping to catch the "king" out making a minor mistake leading to pushing a tire beyond the limit, but it never happened.

^Gotcha.

What are your thoughts on his tire setup? 275s up front and 315s in the rear... You like a square setup don't you?

Yeah, I like square fitment for the same reasons given in the article (you have to slow down to correct your line with understeer, but you can drive through oversteer without slowing down to a fairly high level of slip angle).

Feed has gone to 295/30-18 on 18x11 square like I have been using since 2013 on my FD on their Touge FD though they are running +30mm offset instead of +45 offset because they have the Feed wide fenders. They did a test on the touge recorded on Hot Version and as usual they were faster on the wider wheels/tires. Unfortunately, they went with Garret GTW turbo instead of EFR though and the power looks like it comes on suddenly because it lacks that EFR low rpm boost/torque.

Interesting.

How do know so much about their setup ? The YouTube vids I see is just them going through the touge..

In the video they show the "roll call" of the vehicle that shows the specs and then they talk about the cars on the "impression" run and test them against the clock on the timed segment.

Best Motoring has been really aggressive about taking down their content when others post it and only putting up older stuff and teasers to the newer stuff.

I think the revised Feed FD3s with GTW turbo was in Volume 136 which I saw before Best Motoring took it down.

Very good read. Thanks for posting that up! :icon_tup:

I kept looking for more after the last sentence. I wanted to know what the VBOX said about the comparison, but I'm sure it just shows that he was faster. I miss reading well written articles like this.

Is this guy on the forum?

SD2OC,

Thanks! I'm glad that you liked reading the article.

evo,

I doubt that he would reveal himself to remain anonymous. It would be cool to ride shotgun or at least shake that man's hand.

Cheers,
George