Trustafarians, plutocrats, and powerball winners have a gajillion Thomas Crown-style ways to satisfy their need for speed. Among the cushiest is Ferrari’s consumer-level driving course, a seemingly innocuous yet deliberately seductive series of programs dubbed Corso Pilota.
You say you wanna go fast? Though marketed as a means of sampling prancing horses on racetracks like wine flights at a Michelin-starred restaurant, the meetups embed Ferrari’s track-only Challenge cars at the top two tiers of the Sport, Evoluzione+, and Race programs. Think of the race machine as the apex predator for wannabe Lewis Hamiltons—a truer-than-ever metaphor given the Brit’s impending switch to team rosso.
The Ferrari Challenge Series is the entry point for the brand’s racing efforts and is only open to Ferrari owners. The one-make series launched in 2000 with the 360 Challenge, the brand’s first track-only car based on a road car; subsequent seasons have been based around the F430, 458, 488, and most recently, 296 models.
Ferrari racing client Eric Marston says he dreamed of competition during his self-described middle class childhood in Ohio while idolizing Thomas Magnum’s Ferrari 308 GTS. “I told everyone I’m going to own a Ferrari one day,” he recalls, “and they all laughed at me.” When Marston’s work in the tech industry enabled it, he indulged in his first ‘Rari in 2012, an F430 Spider. A few years later he tackled a Ferrari Club track day at Willow Springs in the rain while most drivers chickened out; he was so into speed that he lapped for 90 minutes straight until he ran out of fuel. Since running through the Corso Pilota program and entering the Challenge series in 2019, Marston has competed in 52 races.
Like Challenge predecessors which date back to the 360, the $411,301 296 GTB campaigned by Marston was engineered from the get-go to cope with race duties. Unlike previous V8-powered models, the 296’s V6 hybrid powertrain made it easier to trim a big chunk of weight by yanking the EV hardware and relying solely on internal combustion. Goodbye battery and axial-flux motor, hello lightness. Along with the ditching of deadweight like insulation-stuffed body panels, a superfluous seat, and Apple CarPlay-equipped infotainment, the EV-free race car sheds 308 pounds to tip the scales at 3,020 pounds.
Making up for all that lost electric horsepower is 10% more boost pressure and turbos that spin to 180,000 rpm, elevating the engine redline to 8,500 rpm, a 500 rpm increase. The updated mill produces 690 hp, which equates to a remarkable power density of 230 hp per liter; torque remains the same, though it peaks earlier. Notably, the 296 Challenge’s power output far exceeds the run-of-the-mill GT3 race car, which is usually limited to around 520 hp give or take, depending on BOP. Reworked aerodynamics enable the 296 Challenge to produce up to 1,918 pounds of downforce at 155 mph, nearly 20% more than the prior 488 Challenge, but considerably less than a GT3 car.
Playing the part of would-be rich guy, I dabbled with the 296 Challenge for a day at Spain’s Circuito Monteblanco, lapping the race car, taking realtime notes from a right-seat instructor, and reviewing telemetry in search of self-improvement just like I would in a Corso Pilota class. A full Corso Pilota Evoluzione+ course is a $30K prospect and the more focused Race program runs around $40K, so I don’t take the media experience for granted—this is a rare opportunity for seat time with expert guidance in a highly specialized machine, and I’m here for it.
Skipping over the epically capable and eminently likable 296 GTB road car and climbing into the Challenge is like stripping away The Terminator’s soft tissue and diving into the reinforced alloy exoskeleton beneath. It’s an awkward climb into the cockpit thanks to the Eiffel-like rollcage, but once settled into the FIA-approved Sabelt carbon bucket seat, there’s a snug efficiency to the setup. Straight ahead is a multifunction steering wheel that incorporates the usual racing functions—a rev-limiting button for pit speeds, flash-to-pass, drink, etc., along with two manettino dials for traction control: one that controls how soon it kicks in, and another to manage the degree of intrusiveness when it does.
Thankfully, there’s a pit crew on hand to help fine-tune my ergonomics and cinch me into place; between the enveloping seat, the confines of the rollcage structure, and the peculiarities of the steering column’s telescope-only adjustability, the extra assistance makes it easier to situate myself before it’s go time. There’s a trick to shutting the carbon-shelled door that’s just out of reach once you’re strapped into the race buckets like a straightjacketed mental patient: push the featherweight door away, and it bounces back towards you like it was spring loaded. Neat.
And now, time for the magic: turn your attention to the center console, flip the Battery switch to the up position, do the same with the Ignition switch, then press the red Start button to bring the twin-turbo V6 to life. The roar that emits from the rear of the 296 Challenge is dramatically different from the roadgoing 296 GTB—louder, raspier, and rawer sounding than the road car thanks to straighter pipes and the omission of a gas particulate filter.
Dabbing the paddle shifter into first yields a satisfying click, and the yoked wheel yanks you out of the pits and into the blend line with surprisingly quick, low effort. With less than one turn lock-to-lock, you’ll only ever need to turn the wheel either 90 degrees to the left or the right. Hold the Pit button to heed the obligatory 60 km/h (37 mph) speed limit, release, and then it’s a quick blast to the 8,500-rpm redline once on the track. While the tachometer on the crystal clear TFT is visible enough, the 12 LEDs signifying the upper reaches of the rev range become one of most critical data points; with the quick-revving 120-degree six-cylinder’s turbos spooling so quickly, upshifting before redline becomes a critical game of timing and tapping.
Unlike the 296 GTB’s remarkable thrust and face-flattening urge to move forward, the Challenge feels more progressive—less devastatingly insistent, more linear and predictable in a way that inspires more precise driving, and ultimately a deeper sense of learning for competition. The increased downforce also reduces the 296 Challenge’s straight-line acceleration, but in concert with Pirelli’s bespoke race rubber the reward is remarkably responsive turn-in, and tremendous mid-corner traction. While the road car would outsprint the Challenge car in a straight line, the Challenge car’s tremendous corner grip, heightened downforce, and generally more agile nature enables far quicker lap times.
As a point of comparison, the 296 Challenge feels distinctly more controllable than the 488 Challenge, which operates optimally within a narrower range of conditions. Coax the 488 into a corner the wrong way, and you might get a bit of understeer or a handful of oversteer; in contrast, the 296 Challenge feels more sorted and communicative, just like you’d expect from a lighter, grippier, more taut version of the well-planted road car.
Perhaps the most startling aspect of the 296 Challenge are its brakes. While the brake-by-wire setup is retained from the road car, the racer incorporates Brembo’s CCM-R Plus system which derives its tech from Formula 1. The stoppers feature massive 408-mm front and 390-mm rear rotors and are said to offer triple the lifespan of conventional CCM brakes. Despite the electronic link between pedal and caliper, modulation under threshold braking is easy, aided by the manettino-adjustable ABS dial.
The brakes are so powerful I repeatedly found myself stabbing the left pedal too early, especially on the long straight at speeds above 150 mph. It’s blessedly reassuring to feel like boat anchor brakes will bail you out if you’re about to come into a corner too fast, which is easy to do with the 8,500-rpm screamer over your shoulder shooting you forward. Adjusting the ABS threshold in-car also makes it easier to dial in your preferences based on track surfaces and weather conditions. The only area where I missed hydraulic brakes was at pedal release, where having more pedal travel makes it easier to manage corner entry speeds going into the apex.
Decoding my laps based on telemetry with an instructor unlocks the cascade of tiny decisions and actions that can lead to quick lap times, or the folly of goofs that can diminish that hard work. Adding color is my instructor’s colored commentary in Italianenglish, which punctuates my errors in “Oops!” and acknowledges success in “Bravo!” Reviewing graphs that compare pedal inputs, steering angle, speed to the instructor’s baseline laps makes it easy to see room for improvement. Gamifying the process makes it easy and addictive; I want to break below 1:40 in my next session, so it’s a battle of wills to pull off even later braking, more precise corner entry, and quick-but-clean exits.
After my drug-like, pinch-the-arm day lapping the 296 Challenge, it’s easy to see why the Challenge Series has exploded in popularity. Ferrari’s Jeffrey Grossbard says attendees have nearly doubled from approximately 110 entrants in 2019, adding that the addition of the non-competitive Club Challenge program to race weekends has broadened the audience to “… sons, nephews, wives,” not to mention an increasing number of female Corso Pilota graduates and competitors.
While some Challenge drivers have gone on to compete in GT3 and IMSA racing, others are content staying in the one-make series, which can cost in excess of $1 million for full race support, car transport, and enough spare parts to cover typical rubbing-is-racing incidents. Marston says the Ferrari experience involves more than just sexy race hardware, with perks including dinners with acclaimed chef Massimo Bottura and hangs with Charles Leclerc. Having won the 2024 Coppa Shell North American Challenge series, Marston says he’s still aiming to complete his goal of racing at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. “I need to start getting into that world,” he says, “but I come back to Challenge because even though it’s a competitive atmosphere, there’s a great sense of camaraderie. It seems like a funny thing to say, but it really is kind of like a family.”
