Ahh, Ferrari. If they aren't busy lying about the real world mass of their cars by outrageously underreporting values like an insecure, whiny teenage girl, they're busy trying to control the media and getting off to the resultant picture of themselves they paint to the world at large. Of course, in Gran Turismo Sport's Gr.3 class, the former of which isn't possible, and I've yet to see any men in suits with Rosso Scuderia ties at my doorstep yet, so...
...I'm utterly defenceless in admitting how smitten I am by the 458 road car, and especially its GT3 incarnation. It wears fat flares better than most fair ladies do swimsuits, and its smoothly intoxicating 9,500rpm NA V8 shriek would make anyone forget any other engine note they've heard in their lives. I truly think that the 458 road car is the supercar recipe executed to such perfection that everything else, even its successors and their rivals, has to be held to. It's the sort of car that a 3 year old would pick out a toy of in a yard sale and henceforth have their life forever changed.
Yeeeeah, I mean, there's the itty bitty, teensy weensy, ever so slightly non–negligible issue of it having tried to kill me... several times. And it will continue to do so, especially when the weather is bad. But who cares? Its wild handling is already notorious by this point in the game, and that's even before it starts shredding tyres as though they were sticky pictures of its ex. Whack default suspension settings, blahblah, you've heard it all before. To steal a quote from GTPlanet's own LeGeNd-1, "No sane racing team will send their drivers out in GTS' 458". It's that bad. Not only do the misaligned tyres make the 458 a feisty mistress to wrestle, but they also make it one that gets exponentially more uncontrollable with time due to how the tyres seemingly have a fetish for autocannibalism. This makes the already tricky to handle 458 one of the most inconsistent GT3 cars I've ever sampled—even on the default Racing Hard tyres and low wear multipliers, you will feel and carry an errant powerslide with you for the rest of the stint, as the fragile rear end of the car palpably degrades into a Ferrari–badged shopping cart with wheels that steer in a full circle, following where the car wills them instead of the other way around. I have the brake bias of my 458 set fully to the front most of the time not because it's faster or feels best, but because it allows the 458 to start mildly fantasising about actually having some hint of balancing its tyre wear front to rear over a stint.
Unlike the Huracán that will unabashedly take the first opportunity to kill you—or simply make its own, the 458 is more methodical and psychotic a murderer. It lures you in with its styling, its soundtrack, its throttle response, and will genuinely impress even the harshest of critics with its agile, responsive, communicative, surgically precise, and yet all so effortless front end, the likes of which is only possible from a thoroughbred MR racing machine. It earns the trust of its driver and makes them yearn for more while waiting to bare its fangs for when they are least prepared and lulled into the rhythm of a long stint, for that is when it seemingly derives the most pleasure from the kill.
Ferraris go fast, as does this one. But I unfortunately am not referring to its gear limited top speed of 315km/h (196mph) in this particular case—I'm talking about how quickly the 458 GT3 will rob control of you by turning itself into a Singaporean spec 458, making the left side of the car you're sitting on the passenger side. There's little to no buildup to a slide, and once you start to get enough slip angle to possibly start looking cool with a drift, that is oh so coincidentally the exact same point where a 458 just decides its had enough of your BS and points you towards the grandstands where it decrees you belong. A 911 would give you more options and outs in a slide than this horse of horror—there is absolutely nothing you as a driver can do to correct the car once it reaches over that binary tipping point and goes. It should go without saying by this point that even fantasising about driving this thing in the wet is audacious enough a thought for your preferred deity to ignite the flammable adhesives you must've been inhaling to have come up with that idea: the car simply cannot put ANY power down out of a corner, not to mention it is prone to snapping and fishtailing like a 450,000 Cr. MR2.
All these shortcomings and death threats may well be forgiven, or even be a worthy trade, if the 458 is quick in Gr.3. After all, in a simplified and safe environment that is sim racing, wherein there are little to no variables with the track and car conditions, we gamer types have somehow managed to weaponise the tail happiness of cars to become time attack leaderboard dominators. I've seen the 458 pop up a few times on leaderboards, but personally, I've seen the 2015 Audi R8 LMS and 2015 Lamborghini Huracán GT3 twins much more often than the 458 when a track favours a NA, RMR layout. The 458 then, from what I can surmise, is a niche alternative car at best for when you want a challenge or to go against the grain, but ultimately, not a very good car in most situations.
And yet I enjoy this car nonetheless. It's almost like walking into a haunted house, wherein you know awful things will befall you, but yet somehow you walk in with anticipation and excitement for said atrocities. It's so good because it's so "bad". It seemingly wears its role as a terroriser like a pretty crimson red dress with pride, and hot damn does it wear it well. That's the whole point and draw of the car, to me. It takes in many people with its allure and spits the vast majority of them out, but for those that don't get spat out, for those who can handle and manage it to the point of appearing as a boring drive, making it hang with everything else as though it were just another normal, viable, competitive car in Gr.3, the 458 takes those very select few people and makes them appear as though the brightest of superstars.
It's a succubus cloaked in red, who could make a sinner of a saint, a sober man of an addict, and a murderer of a nurse, all just with its firm, hypnotic ode of desire. And what it makes of me is a very conflicted man. I know I shouldn't, just on principle alone. Realistically speaking, I know I could never. But it so innocently bewitching me can be nothing other than by the most meticulous and passionate of design. I don't know how else I'm supposed to feel. I don't know what else I can feel.
I know it's morally objectionable because it's a Ferrari. I know it hates me with more vehemence than I do its maker. I know it's bad for me. I know it'd get me in trouble. But I don't care. In fact, I want it all the more because of that. I want its soulful siren to call the world's attention to me as I fly through corners with it. I want to prove to the world that I can handle that which I can never have. I want to make a statement about how unfair the world is. I want to live a life that I never had. I want to feel like I'm worth its abuse, that I am a worthy human being.
What else were you expecting to happen if you loan the keys to the heart of a Ferrari to a poor man?
Look at me. Look at how good I am with the car. I am nothing without my craft, and this soulful being is a work of art. So look at me.
...is this still about the car?
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