I had fully expected the Scuderia to shine at Fiorano, Ferrari's private track next to the factory, where all their road and race cars are tested. However, it is the car's ability on real world roads with bumps and off-cambers that left me searching for superlatives.

In the past, cars biased towards track day adventures were usually only good on smooth roads. On real world roads with bumps and off-cambers, an uncompromising, no-retreat, no-surrender suspension philosophy will negatively impact ride and handling.

Michael Schumacher may have retired from racing, but other than making cameo appearances on Fiat van TV ads, he is now gainfully employed as a control driver for Ferrari road cars.

Schumacher helped Ferrari set up these very effective spring and damper rates, and one of the key suggestions he made was that the dampers be made separately adjustable from the Manettino settings controlled from the steering wheel just like in an F1 car.

In other words, unlike on the F430 and 599, you can select Race to quicken up the throttle response and gear shifting strategies, while retaining the more comfortable suspension setting. This is desirable not just for use on public roads where a driver might want to feel quicker response while retaining comfort on bad roads, but also on bumpy race tracks like the Nürburgring Nordschleife.

Thus, on bad roads, the active damping takes the sting out of the road surface, making this hard-core Ferrari, like the more softly sprung F430 on which it is based, ride well enough to be driven everyday. While both F430 and Scuderia have reflex camber, the slightly nose down attitude that helps aerodynamic stability, the Scuderia sits 15mm lower all round.

On perfectly flat tracks like Hockenheim on the other hand, the Sport damper setting is ideal for reducing body roll to eke out the last smidgen of mechanical grip from the sticky tires.

Thanks to the enabling technology of state-of-the-art on-board computers, the active damping and clever E-Diff (Electronic Differential) integrated with F1-Trac (Stability & Traction Control) perfectly apportions power to the driven wheels, enabling the Scuderia to perform what sometimes seems to be miracles of grip and poise.

Older Ferraris, and in fact almost every car I have driven, bump steers and generally gets thrown off-line when you go into a bumpy corner hard under braking and then apply full throttle on the way out. However, thanks to its active systems, the Scuderia largely shrugs off this kind of abuse.

One of my favorite test roads in the hills near Modena has some very interesting mid-corner dips and off-cambers that has most cars doing a hop, skip and jump if you take them flat on the throttle. But amazingly you can keep the Scuderia's throttle nailed through these bends, confident that the car is going to go where you point it.

This trait was very obvious on one medium right-hander where the edge of the road fell away steeply enough on the apex that you felt the nearside rear wheel was using up almost all its spring travel as we rocketed through on full noise. Yet the Scuderia just took it in its stride, with no noticeable upset or course deviation.