Watch Chris Harris Be Moved by the Ferrari 488 Pista’s Exquisite Track Manners

It turns out an Italian supercar with 710 horsepower is quite good. Who would’ve thought?

byChris Tsui|
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The Ferrari 488 Pista's mid-mounted 3.9-liter turbocharged V8 taken from the Prancing Horse's Challenge racer makes 710 horsepower, 50 more than the standard 488 GTB. It also weighs 200 pounds less than the base car and is precariously close in pace to Ferrari's seven-figure, hybrid LaFerrari hypercar. Needless to say, it's as proper and hardcore as they get—and Top Gear's Chris Harris approves.

Our own Lawrence Ulrich recently called the Pista "the most purely thrilling and seductive car" he drove in all of 2018. Coming from a lineage that includes the 360 Challenge Stradale, 430 Scuderia, and 458 Speciale though, that verdict was hardly a surprise. Harris recently got some seat time in Ferrari's heroic 488 Pista as well, and as you might expect, he also came away mightily impressed.

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Despite going into the experience with a good dose of pessimism, the track-spec 488 quickly won Harris over with its unrelenting, outright pace and old-school yet predictable handling. However, he was less than impressed with the Pista's dated interior—hey, everything's relative.

While watching Chris Harris flog the latest and greatest supercars around a circuit is pretty much always a good time, our favorite moment from this clip is perhaps when the TG host decides to take a moment to address the way many of these cars are bought and treated.

As good as the Pista is to drive, many will, unfortunately, spend the majority of their lives locked away in some garage, feeding the ego of its owner and waiting to hit the 2048 auction block. Seemingly speaking directly to those owners, Harris says, "You can't make stuff that's this good to drive and then treat it as an inanimate object. I think they should make that a crime in Italy." 

Amen, Chris. Amen.

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