2016 Ferrari 488 GTB first drive

Even with the steering wheel mounted over the correct footwell, the 488 requires a few minutes of recalibration. Not because it is hugely fast (although it absolutely is) but because the Speciale rack is exceptionally quick and the suspension ostensibly very busy. Drive the car back to back with pretty much anything else on a particularly rumpled B road, and the palpable dynamic chatter through the seatbacks and steering column can make it seem coltish and a little anxious.

This first impression though can be discounted, because by the time you’ve got used to the fingertip sensitivity of the 488’s arcade-game steering, the car is so far under your skin it's almost intravenous. The starting point is its change of direction, which is absolutely electric – and not just because the overtly snappy helm decrees it, but because the chassis is spellbindingly brilliant at channeling all the incisiveness onto the deck. Crucially, this occurs not with the thick-necked, grip-obsessed stability of its rivals, but with a progressive intuition that gauges body roll, weight transfer and rate of response to near perfection.

Little surprise then that this aptitude requires some acclimatisation, given how forthrightly it shuns the usual tacked-down sterility. The 488 doesn’t want to tear up the tarmac, it wants flit and float supplely over it, tethered by sympathetic tuning, a clever diff, and low mass. While there’s much to admire in the front end’s scalpel-bladed certainty or the yaw-happy lateral grip, it’s actually the suspension’s talent for turning a tickle of your wrists into a split-second dip of its wing that really exhilarates. It does this by using half a degree of lean to tap you into the car’s cornering attitude as assuredly as the left pedal elaborates on the brakes.