There’s something exciting about a fast car. The power, the presence, the noise, the sensations, it all just makes you want to let it off the leash a bit. However, before you do, you might want to consider the conditions. If it’s damp, cold, or both out, don’t get too exuberant, or you might bin it. That’s exactly what seems to have happened to this Ferrari F40, which was crashed in greasy conditions in the U.K. this week.
According to the Herts Advertiser, the crash happened on Thursday in Markyate, which is near Luton. In a statement to the newspaper, Hertfordshire police said “The driver has been taken to hospital for treatment, and the vehicle has been recovered.” The Mirror reports that the driver was a service technician, which would definitely make this one of the worst days at work ever.
Cold, damp weather in a powerful car on summer tires without any form of driver aids requires serious attention and restraint, and in this case, restraint wasn’t displayed. You can hear the F40 experience wheelspin while accelerating, and while wheelspin is usually a sign to gently back off the throttle, gently backing off the throttle doesn’t sound like it happened. It really looks like the driver kept their foot in it until the back end of the F40 kicked out, at which point another error occurred.
Greasy road, too low a gear, gap to the car in front, too much loud pedal and around she goes!
Silly bugger.#Ferrari #F40 pic.twitter.com/87FKuIxhRB
— _ (@DabOf0ppo) January 17, 2025
Judging by the video’s audio, it sounds like the driver of the F40 lifted abruptly once they realized the car was rotating. This is a bad move because lifting in an oversteer condition can often result in a spin, especially if the car has a small polar moment of inertia. Considering the F40’s mid-engined, that lift seems to have caused the back end to whip around violently, resulting in the carnage you see here.
As the F40 slams into the curb, a few things happen. The first curb strike with the front end exacerbates the spin, while the second curb strike with the rear tire flips the limited-run Ferrari onto its side, directly into a lamp post. The damage is quite brutal, with the front clamshell being ripped off and shoved underneath the car.
Potentially making matters worse, this might not be just any Ferrari F40. Right now, photos from the scene show the registration number F40PRX, and the car with that number plate is allegedly the highest mileage F40 in existence. While the car can certainly be rebuilt thanks in part to strong values on F40s of around $2 million for a decent one, a crash like this would certainly leave a mark on its history.
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As it stands, we wish the driver a speedy recovery, wish that owner can get their prized possession restored to tip-top condition, and hope this serves as a reminder to treat powerful cars with respect, particularly in suboptimal conditions. Things can go wrong quickly, and at the end of the day, it’s best to get home safely.
(Photo credits: X/Dabofoppo)
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Dude watches someone wreck a rare Ferrari, calmly goes “ooh oh sh*t” as if he just dropped his ice cream on the ground.
I remember seeing footage of a German car magazine or show testing a multimillion-dollar Jag prototype, with a body made of hand-hammeted aluminum. After the driver stuffed it into the wall, all the cameraman said after a few seconds was “Sheisse.”
I remembered reading Car and Drivers review of the F40 back in the 90’s and one thing that stuck with me is that the F40 is very temperamental in cold weather. The engine will almost be in a “limp” mode until it get sufficiently warmed up and when it does wakes up, it’s very sudden and your going to get both turbos all at once depending on how deep your foot is into it at the time.
One needs Great Tires in those conditions.
“‘Good tires,” Bob mused, casually lighting a cigarette, “but certainly not great tires”
Peter Egan
Road & Track
May, 1983
Any fan of Peter will remember this famous and funny Side Glances of his on the last page of that R&T issue, a picture of a guy lighting up; atop the roadway, while looking down at his Ferrari 308, in the ditch, surrounded by trees.
I think it’s a Ferrari Berlinetta Boxer*, I can’t tell a 365 GT4 BB from a 512 BB at that angle. If that’s a chin spoiler, it’s a 512.
*not actually a boxer
Hello, lamppost, whatcha knowing? I like to watch Ferraris bro-ing.
Herts Advertiser Showcases Elusive Herts Donut.
This tech must hate the stairs because he’s always lifting.
OK, I’ll show myself out. This was so painful to watch. At least if it was Jay Kay or Rowan Atkinson we’d have a cool story.
That was all “too cold for the tire compound”, which made it like driving on ice. If the lift were the cause, the car would’ve snapped in the other direction.
I’m going to also assume this was a younger technician or lot attendant and chalk this up to frontal lobe development. The first time I drove something along these lines power-wise on the road I was in my mid 30s, it was a Viper SRT10, and I resisted the urge to get on it until I was in an area away from prying eyes, trees, and light poles. It was also warm and dry so other than leaving to rather wide tire marks, there were no consequences.
“‘Good tires,” Bob mused, casually lighting a cigarette, “but certainly not great tires”
Google Peter Egan for the classic Road & Track PS photo of the Ferrari Testarossa in the trees
I was a newspaper photographer back in the late 70s and l heard about a crash on the police scanner. A guy rolled his Ford pickup on a county road, not far out of town, and it landed on its roof. He got out safely and casually lit up a smoke just as I walked up. It, to this day, is one of my favorite pictures from that part of my career.
If that had been me, I would probably need a change of pants.
And props to the folks who called out Peter Egan. His R&T writing as well as the stuff he wrote for Motorcyclist magazine was so fun and evocative of the highs of driving fun cars and interesting bikes. I have owned and driven fairly pedestrian cars and a few bikes over the years. So, never took out a $2M Ferrari. THAT would’ve been a check I couldn’t write, let alone cash. Or my insurance cover.
The people that do these types of things never make the simple calculation of the upside versus the downside result of their decision. Once asked the owner of an F40 if I could sit in it (while parked). He said yes. I did (upside: I can say I sat in an F40, downside: I get stuck in the seat and embarrassed). The decision tree for asking to drive the car (which I don’t think he would have agreed to) is less favorable.
Unless he intended to spin it, he made the calculation and got it wrong.
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
A Veyron owner told him to say a seagull hit the windshield.
What do they have against BYD?
That was painful to watch. I have quite a bit less power in my frivolous car, and still I didn’t full send it in lower gears for months & several hundred miles after purchase.
I damn sure wouldn’t do it in someone else’s car.
Shouldn’t the headline read “Watch This Ex-Mechanic Put A $2 Million Ferrari F40 In The Bushes” ?
I know it’s no F40 (lol) but having recently had some tire spinny fun in the wet with my 533i I don’t really understand how this happens? And at least in my experience w under 300 hp rwd cars it’s jarring but lifting usually does still right the ship if the tail is coming out. Also if it’s on summer tires wouldn’t they spin easier hence counterintuitively easier to manage? Like if I start spinning tires on snow and let off the throttle almost nothing happens-if I spin them on dry pavement there is much more possibility of weird shit happening because the difference between grip and slip is so much higher.
Too many idiots hooning that think that lifting the throttle when the tail starts to get squirrely is somehow worse than keeping the throttle pedal mashed to the floor. Probably they’re reading too many Mustang forums with too little driving experience in real life. I can absolutely confirm that if you stop feeding it torque soon enough, a 662 hp RWD car will settle down and right the ship.
For real, I’ve gotten in way more trouble keeping my foot in it than I ever have lifting.
From the videos I’ve watched, the stereotypical Mustang driver leaving the car show stomps on the gas while still turning out of the show, the driver panics, and slow hands takes care of the rest.
Exactly. Get out of it and steer out of it… Usually helps a lot!
“…How this happens ?…”
Little awareness, close to zero countersteer, and a huge, huge, huge lack of luck. Everything aligned perfectly against him. This could and should have ended in a scratch or two and a very bruised ego.
The speeds were low, and it wasn’t even sure the guy was trying to show off. Could just as well have been an unfamiliarity with the throttle response.
My guess is the main mistake was taking it out in such weather at all.
Here’s a bit of it on dry roads, and it’s already a handful:
https://youtu.be/DWT2EPUxOWc
What was the temperature at the time and what was the tire?
In southern England at the moment it’s a bit above freezing, but it hasn’t rained for several weeks, so the roads are greasy and slippy.
Not good weather for mid-engined cars on summer tyres.
Exactly. Years ago I worked at a Porsche dealer with a lot small enough that they couldn’t unload transporters on site, so they’d unload the cars at a nearby commuter lot and shuttled the cars maybe a quarter mile to the lot. One mid 30s day, a 911 (991) Turbo Cab, Michelin Pilot Sports, and an inexperienced technician equaled a brand-new Porsche met a telephone pole and a technician met the HR manager and the unemployment office.
Mid-engined cars behave somewhat differently to front-engined cars. They’re inherently less stable.
I have a 718 GT4 and can confirm it absolutely has lift-off oversteer in low-grip conditions. Too much power is bad, but too little is also bad. You need a bit of gas to keep the rear end stuck down.
Obviously, I’ve never driven an F40!
Fair point about the mid engine dynamics being different-I only have experience front engined rear wheel drives.
Pretty sure that’s a lambo, dude!
Speed. I am speed.
KA-CHOW!
Given the mileage, this crash just adds to the provenance of the car. Like Rowan Atkinson’s dailied F1 which he wrecked and rebuilt two (three?) times in his fifteen years of ownership.
Right, but Johnny mechanic is just some English bloke. Not everyone can conjure the Black magic to adder its provenance.
The owner of this car isn’t Johnny Mechanic! (References acknowledged.)
Cold tires. Cold operator. Cold-cocked.
Did he check the tire pressure?
Looks to me like he might’ve been .5psi off
Should have used a digital gauge.
Manual or auto? 2.8 V6 or Iron Duke?
Or am I too used to Fiero-based replicas?
What you did there?
I see.
The real question is- who has access to such a car that would let this happen? IOW, what kind of F40 owner lets someone who would do this drive the car in the first place?
This can’t be a real Ferrari tech, right? RIGHT?????
Just for perspective, a Ferrari tech probably earns less than a Toyota tech.
Likewise BYD probably makes more selling Seagulls, than Ferrari did through its entire existence.
I’m told that ‘a quick hoon’ is part of the MoT test procedure for F40’s and similar.
I was told this by a family member who used to dot a lot of MoT checks on freshly resto’d supercars, including an F40 belonging to a certain Pink Floyd drummer.
He never stuffed one into a tree though.
(To add context; most places that work on high-end cars like this aren’t licensed to do MoT tests, because it’s not worth the expense for the small number of cars they handle in a year. Instead they’ll take it to a local garage that does MoTs.)
I will never understand how people can’t comprehend that in powerful rear wheel drive cars without any driver aids one does not simply “send it”. You’d think that after seeing dozens upon dozens of videos on social media of people losing the rear end of fast cars that the rubes would learn, but alas.
There’s no fucking launch control in an F40 amigo. It’s you and the car, and the car is homicidal…as was supercar tradition until the goddamn Veyron showed up and ruined everything. These machines are to be respected and even feared. The list of cars you shouldn’t do this in is as vast as the bank account of your average F40 owner.
I mean sure I wish the guy a speedy recovery and all that but that poor, poor F40. These are such monumentally special cars and this is the one that’s been enjoyed the most out of all of them. It deserved better.
Even the Mustang/Challenger/Camaro-runs-into-the-crowd meme makes me pine for the days when everyone’s first RWD car was a Chevette.
Maybe for service techs for high end exotic machines, one of the job qualification tests should be to give them a TVR Cerbera (With the V8, not the Speed Six) for a week. If they survive, and the car is still in one piece, they get the job.
400 HP. Weighs about the same as a Miata. No ABS, no TCS, no Launch Control, etc. The Cerbera had a long-travel throttle to compensate for the lack of electronic traction-control and very sharp steering. The V8 powered cars were two turns from lock to lock and the Speed Six car was 2.4 turns.
“Pffft those people were idiots, I’m too good. It’ll never happen to me, bro.”
The Porsche 930 Widow Maker would like to endorse your assertion here.
The road to hell is paved with overconfidence.
And the bushes alongside it filled with poorly driven supercars.
As James May said on a trip to Patagonia a midengine car is glorious it hugs the road right up until it doesn’t. This was after his Lotus left loose. He looked like he was sitting in a pile of poop ????
And the faster and more capable the car, the bigger the hole in the hedge you will make when you lose it.
We do?
I think too much speed was part of the problem to start with.
I’d bet he wishes he recovered before he hit the curb.
Hammond!!!!!
YOU IDIOT!!!!
oh cock
I worked at a Dodge dealer in the mid-90s, right around when the 2nd Gen Viper GTS came out with door locks and such, we had the owner of a 1st gen come in and want some of that fanciness, so they added the hardtop and added some door poppers using Caravan hatch parts and fob, the manager and main tech took it out to ‘test’ the parts and nearly got sideways on the highway.
I think the fantasy of putting your foot into it is part of the draw, but clearly the reality requires the proper venue and some experience. I’d have expected a little better though from a Ferrari technician than some southern country dealership boys.
He was Michael Schumacher for about three seconds there. I hope he enjoyed it.
The part when he hit the tree?
Boo this man
[hovers over clicking smiley face button but just can’t do it]
Groan. Booooo 😉
Oooof! That’s a little harsh!
Still too soon.