Long Beach, California - The purists may turn up their noses, and the cost of building it must have been astronomical, but the soundtrack is awe-inspiring and the sheer ease with which Federico Sceriffo breaks the rear end loose at little more than walking pace in his twin-supercharged Ferrari 599 GTB tyre-shredder must be very intimidating for his Formula Drift competitors.
But the 599 isn’t force-fed, I hear you correct me, it has a naturally aspirated six-litre V12. Not this one: in addition to the roll cage, gynormous rear wing and suspension mods required for Formula Drift, Sceriffo and his FFF Drift Department team mounted two belt-driven Rotrex superchargers on a big V-shaped plate bolted to the front of the engine block and fed the resulting squashed air through a huge front-mounted intercooler before stuffing it into the 599’s inlet manifolds.
Picture: Lorenzo Moro / FFF Drift Department
The whole installation is surprisingly neat, and the result is a 150kW boost in power, from the standard 493 to more than 640kW, and a killer 400Nm increase in torque, from 608 to more than 1000Nm.
Now christened Fiorella (little flower) the bright yellow 599 made its US debut at the first round of the 2018 Formula Drift series in Long Beach. Turn the sound up and enjoy seven minutes of absolutely non-PC V12 music.