Living with the 2022 Ferrari F8 Tributo

This last thought was the most powerful and disarming. Driving a Ferrari, Lamborghini or McLaren puts an owner right up high on the wanker hit list. But wanker or not, money exchanged hands, I was promised delivery within eight months and the sales guy was on his way to another commission.
Ferrari was largely to blame for getting me in this position, engaging me as it did in an exercise in Italian seduction by granting a few laps behind a carbon-fibre steering wheel at Sydney Motorsport Park. I had for some time been contemplating putting my original 997 II GT3 CS out to pasture, and I had sampled many beautiful alternatives, but nothing could drag me away from it until this red F8 walked into my life, dressed to impress and pouting extroverted red lipstick.
A Lamborghini Huracan V10 was the only European to have tempted me and after a brief race-track fling I left it grinning like an idiot, convinced that I had to have it simply because of the way the V10 sang and made me feel. As evocative and addictive as it is, I couldn’t quite justify buying it in my mind. Then I was offered another suggestion and it got me thinking.
The other Italian in my life, my Calabrian wife and chief consultant, said I should get the Ferrari and a Lamborghini. Of course, to her everything from Italy is better than everything from anywhere else. She is a perfect example, which is why I married her.
Frankly, I hadn’t given Ferrari much of a thought and I knew little about them, and still don’t. However, before going too far down that rabbit hole I checked out some essential facts.
Topping the GT3’s power by an additional 209kW to 530kW got my attention. Nearly doubling its torque to 770Nm at 3250rpm, 1000rpm before the GT3’s starts to get meaningful, made me wonder how it stays on the road.
Standard carbon brakes were noted, thank goodness, because with a 0-200km/h acceleration time of 8.1 seconds, 260km/h-plus speeds at Sydney Motorsports Park were going to need retardation.
Then I learned about Ferrari’s clever F1-Track and Side Slip Control which employ algorithms to manage all of the car’s dynamic parameters with the sole purpose of trying to ensure you get to see the start/finish line at least a second time. And it worked. Suddenly a $600,000 spend seemed like a good idea...
Fast forward 10 months and Gigi, as my wife and I have named it, arrived on our shores two months late and at a time when Covid rules restrict driving to no further than 5km. Dealer delivery has been completed, a $7000 insurance premium paid (with a $6000 excess...), $3000 worth of sleeper dash cams facing front and rear have been installed and it has been trucked to a specialist body wrap expert for $7000 worth of protection from road rash and grazing from race-track rubber.