McLaren 650S Kills Ferrari 458 in a Drag Race, Shows Twin-Turbo Generation Gap

These two supercars might seem close to an untrained eye, but the truth is that, in terms of performance, they’re a whole world apart. The twin-turbo world, that is.

A quick glance at the specs reveals the monstrous torque difference between the 458’s naturally aspirated 4.5-liter V8 and the twin turbo 3.8-liter V8 at the center of the 650S. We’re talking about 540 Italian Nm (398 lb-ft) against 678 British Nm (500 lb-ft).

The same goes for the power-to-weight ratio, where the McLaren not only has the advantage brought by its extra horses, but is also lighter thanks to its carbon fiber construction.

Then again, nothing can prepare you for the staggering real world difference between the two. We’ve brought along a video that shows just how large the straight line performance gap between these machines is.

Both the Ferrari 458 and the McLaren 650S in the footage come in Spider form, but that’s not too big of an issue when it comes to going fast. This is especially true for the Mac, but it ultimately applies to both cars - the engineers managed to make the performance difference between the coupe and the open-top so small that you can’t quite notice it in terms of street driving.

Sure, the 650S find itself in stock condition, while the 458 uses custom exhaust headers and high-flow cats, but the McLaren driver doesn’t mind that.

Even so, we can’t show you this video without mentioning that while the 650S is the faster machine, the 458 remains the one that’s deeper connected to its driver.

This footage only comes to wet our appetite for seeing Ferrari’s twin-turbo 488 GTB joining the action and we’ll be back with the first videos of that soon.