812 losing control

PJxxx · Nov 5, 2020

MDEL said: ↑

Sometimes you don’t have to turn the manettino to CT or CST or even be stupid in order for the rear to step sideways making you loose the control of the car.
Despite having driven my F12 before at high speed on the wet race track with the manettino in Race mode and having had a lot of fun recovering the rear when it shoot sideways coming out of the curves, I once had a very , very frightening experience on a road where I almost lost completely the control of the car. That happened some years ago on a summer day with a very pleasant air temperature while I was driving my F12 on a quite coastal road. With little traffic. the car manettino set in the Sport mode and the tyres, at the time the Pirellis PZero, showing a temperature of around 30ºC. After coming fairly slow at 80 Km/hour out of a curve followed by a long straight, I saw in front of me two slow cars moving close to each other. I started overtaking the first one and suddenly I noticed that on the end of the straight a fast car was coming into my direction. I pressed the accelerator a bit further down but not to the bottom in order to overtake quicker and as soon as I did that the rear shoots abruptly sideways to the left. My instant reaction was easing the throttle gently and not braking while trying to keep the front wheels steered with the road. But when I did that the car shoot sideways once again but this time to the right. I corrected once more with the steering keeping the front wheels steady and somehow avoided hitting the first car with the F12 right side. While I was already side by side with the second car everything repeated again with the F12 shooting sideways first to the left and after I corrected one more time keeping the front wheels steered in the direction of the road, shooting sideways to the right. Miraculously I managed to overtake the two cars without hitting them or losing completely the control of the F12 but when I got to the end of that straight I pulled to the right, stopped the car and had a very deep breath. I then stayed inside the car for about ten minutes trying to figure out what happened. Afterwards I got out of the car and my first instinct was to inspect the Pirellis Pzeros which were almost brand new but I wasn’t able to see anything wrong with them. However, later when I got home the first thing I did was to order a set of new Michelins PSS.

Some weeks later talking to a friend of mine that is an experienced racing driver and knows this road very well I described to him the all incident and he alerted me to the fact that the asphalt on that section of the road is polished. Some months later when the F12 was already equipped with the new MPSS tyres, I picked a quite hot day without traffic, used the same Sport manettino setting and decided to drive several times on the same road section to see if I could replicate the incident coming out of the same curve. Despite having put the accelerator down to the bottom while on the straight the car never shoot abruptly sideways like it did before and I felt that there was much more grip with the F12 always under control.

Fortunately this incident ended well but it showed me how the loss of control on a rear traction Ferrari can occur suddenly and unexpectedly when certain conditions exist.
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Great post. Just ordered PS4S. Just got my car a month ago (500 miles driven) and have had a couple of close calls on warm P Zeros.

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