I have driving experience with both a Cobra and a 458. If you both want to make this fun, safe and fair, my advice is to go to the drag strip and first run a couple of solo passes against the clock, not each other. This will give you both a better sense of how your cars will behave and it will also dampen a bit of the adrenaline and testosterone that will be pulsing through you by not having to stage against each other.
Once you both make a couple passes, compare results and discuss whether or not you feel you can safely race each other. After 2-3 solo timing passes and 1-2 against each other, you should be able to have a safe race that yields some accurate results, with no hardware left lying on the track and no Ferrari black paint on the walls.
"Gimme $500 on the Bandit...er, I mean the 458."
