Recently I wanted to do a comparison of aerodynamic efficiency (Cl/Cd) of different supercars since the 1990s. Because Sport Auto provided wind tunnel data in their supertests, it shouldn't have been difficult. However, there was a problem: 458 Speciale wasn't present. 458 Italia, 488 GTB, 488 Pista, but not Speciale.
Well, I decided to check other sources of data. And it turned out that Ferrari mentioned that 458 Speciale had aerodynamic efficiency around -1.5 (-0.53 Cl and 0.35 Cd). In 2013! I thought this was weird because only in the early 2020s we got such efficiency in supercars like GT3 RS (992), but Ferraris are exceptional because they don't use large rear spoilers!
Even more, if I assumed that their numbers are true, it would mean that aerodynamic efficiency of Ferraris didn't change a lot for, like, a decade (for 296 GTB it'd be around -1.8). At the same time a lot of manufacturers went all the way to increase their downforce for a whole decade!
But okay, that could happen. Maybe Ferrari had an aerodynamic breakthrough back in a day, and they just didn't feel the need to increase that downforce a lot. But Sport auto test drivers, which drove Ferraris on Nurburgring and Hockenheim, said in the articles that downforce figures of 200 kg at 200 km/h didn't feel like it, the car were not so grippy.
And then I decided to delve into the matters. The thing is, a lot of manufacturers, Ferrari included, do not like to present exact downforce figures. They say something like "we increased the downforce 20% compared to the previous model". But thanks to some tests, especially Sport Auto, it is possible to check those statements. And, interestingly, I found out that Ferrari mentioned huge downforce for F430 and 599 GTB already! If to convert those values, it'd be 124.4 kg at 200 kmh for F430, 70 kg for 599 GTB and 140 kg for 458 Italia. However, Sport auto managed to measure all three of these cars in a wind tunnel and got very different figures, -17, -65, and -1 kg respectively. It meant that these cars generated more lift than downforce.
And here comes the most interesting part. Difference between downforce figures of Ferrari and Sport Auto for F430 equals to 141 kg, as well as for 458 Italia, and 135 kg for 599 GTB. It was nearly the same, as well as drag coefficients for these cars! And I came up with an assumption that Ferrari, in their car descriptions, uses only downforce without subtracting the lift, like it is usually done on downforce measurement tests. But this should also mean that their figures for 458 Speciale (-0.53 Cl and 0.35 Cd) are also misleading! And if we assume that this assumption is right, current Ferraris like 296 GTB generate not 240 kg of downforce at 200 kmh but rather around 100 kg, which is not really an exceptional amount, rather mediocre for these days.
P.S. Sorry that this post might seem boring to some of you. Yeah, I know that downforce figures became much more of a marketing selling point by now than a real performance metric. Just wanted to share my little "investigation" because I also thought that Ferrari had really great aerodynamically efficient cars even without large spoilers, but it turns out Lamborghinis are already better in this field...
