The biggest lesson we learnt from driving a bright red Ferrari into the heart of Putrajaya on a weekday afternoon is to not repeat that mistake. We were just feeling a little patriotic in light of the recent independence and Malaysia Day parades. What we failed to factor in was the amount of attention a car Ferrari boldly calls ‘Superfast’ would garner, even when it’s stationary.

Curiously enough, the Ferrari 812 Superfast looks fastest when it isn’t moving. Then again, it’s only natural for Maranello to reserve its sharpest styling cues, some inspired by the 1969 365 GTB/4 Daytona, for a V12 flagship deemed swift enough to justify its bizarre name. You can’t appreciate these lines when the car is reduced to a blur at 300kph (it can actually go all the way to 340kph). But you can’t stop your smartphone from jumping out of your pocket for a few shots if you chance upon one by the roadside. 

That seemed to be the case for a busload of tourists who just had to alight right next to us as we were in the midst of getting the money shot with Perdana Putra, our version of the White House, standing tall in the background. Having interrupted our work for a good 10 minutes, the holidaymakers probably took off with more pictures of the 812 Superfast than the landmark they actually paid to visit. We just hope none of them were fixated on the visibly alarmed journalist cowering in the driver’s seat of his RM3mil rental.

The 488 GTB’s rear-mounted turbocharged engine makes it a closer match to the SF71H race car Vettel calls Loria. Forced induction imbues the car with a track-ready lightness while having the V8 sit behind the driver does all sorts of stimulating things to the ears. With a naturally aspirated V12 mounted up front like a proper grand tourer, the 812 Superfast is of a completely different equine pedigree. If the 488 was bred to win races, the 812 was engineered to keep its smaller sibling’s ego in check.

At 6.5 litres in capacity – a cupful more than the 6.3-litre mill powering the F12tdf and LaFerrari – the 812 Superfast’s V12 engine marks the latest evolution of Maranello’s Tipo F140 block which made its production debut in 2002 under the hood of the legendary Enzo. Since there’s no turbo in this ‘traditional’ setup, maximum torque, which is 718Nm in the 812’s case, only arrives at 7,000rpm. The turbocharged F154 mill in the 488, GTC4Lusso T and Portofino gives you 760Nm at 3,000rpm, hence the more racy driving sensation. But like all of the V12 flagships preceding it, the 812’s native language is power. Sheer power.

The 812 Superfast has access to the same amount of horses as the LaFerrari, hybrid components aside, but they are unloaded onto the rear wheels 500rpm earlier. This makes it the most powerful naturally aspirated production engine in the world today. Even the Lamborghini SVJ which recently broke the Nurgburgring lap record is 30bhp shy of the 812’s output. It’s a proper beast, this. And taming it is no simple feat.

We say this in reference to the transmission tasked to manage the delivery of all 789bhp to the rear. From a driver’s standpoint, the 812 Superfast is fairly easy to operate under civil conditions thanks to how well the 7-speed F1 DCT regulates the output. You don’t realise how clinical it actually is until you stab the throttle, after which the gear changes become much more urgent, even violent at times, to ensure not a split second is wasted on the straights. And because the power and torque curves peak so late, the 812 feels exponentially faster with every upshift that pulls you deeper into the race buckets along the way.

Ferrari’s official numbers validate this unreal sensation. The century sprint is done in a fairly believable 2.9 seconds, but keep your foot on the floor and the 812 will hit 200kph in only 7.9 seconds. That’s faster than you can spell out Ferrari 812 Superfast with a pen and paper. To top it off, the V12 engine provides a fittingly thunderous soundtrack to accompany the frantic build-up in speed – its powerful vocals rich in depth and sheer amplitude. And like the five-minute guitar solo in Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird, this power ballad never wanes. Not at any speed humanly possible on public roads anyway.

Legalities aside, we can’t think of any road in Malaysia on which you can go anywhere near the 812’s 340kph top speed in the first place. And then there’s the issue of how taut the car is set up to ensure it doesn’t take off. You can tell that Ferrari’s F1-derived aerodynamics expertise has rubbed off on the car when you feel its grip on the road tighten the faster you go (there’s 30 percent more downforce than the F12 Berlinetta). Pair this with wide, 20-inch wheels hooked up to a track-inclined suspension and you have an unadulterated supercar that isn’t always kind on the spine.

As a result, the slightest dimple in the tarmac can feel like a pothole if you’re barrelling close to 200kph. It’s a necessary evil to uphold the dynamic purity expected of a Ferrari flagship. In fact, the hunkered down feeling shaped by the 812’s immense levels of aerodynamic traction raised its cornering game when we tackled the sweeping curves of Sepang’s B-roads. It’s also more agile than you’d expect a 4.7-metre long supercar to be thanks to a four-wheel-steer (4WS) system Ferrari calls Virtual Short Wheelbase 2.0 (PCV) and an electric power steering (EPS).

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