The plug-in hybrid Ferrari SF90 XX Stradale has confirmed its place in motoring folklore by smashing the lap record for a road-going Ferrari at the company’s Fiorano test track, with a time of 1:17.309 – shaving 1.4 seconds off the previous record set by the SF90 Assetto Fiorano package.
Driven by Raffaele de Simone, Ferrari’s Head of Development Test Driving (now there’s a job you wouldn’t say no to), the record-setting car featured carbon-fibre wheels and sticky Michelin Cup2R tyres for dry track work.
They’re just the tip of the XX’s performance iceberg, though.
A twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 powers the four-wheel-drive record-setter backed up by three electric motors. With 1,016PS (747kW), the XX has 30PS (22kW) more than the standard SF90 thanks to a new high-output battery (cooled by the S-Duct radiator at the front of the car), polished inlet and exhaust ducts, and new piston crowns for a higher compression ratio. The result is 0-62mph in 2.3 seconds, 0-124mph in 6.5 seconds and 199mph flat out.
Downforce, as you can tell just by looking at it, is as big a part of the XX Stardale’s story as straight-line performance. It develops 540kg – more than a third of its 1,600kg kerb weight – at 155mph, double what the standard SF90 produces.
Sold? Well, we have good news (of a sort): Ferrari will produce 799 Stradales and 599 Spiders, more than all the other XXs – cars like the FXX EVO, FXX-K EVO and 599XX EVO – combined.
Even the cost (relatively speaking in the context of Ferraris that usually cost well over £1 million) is cheap, starting from £673,000.
If you find that ‘knockdown’ price is still a little too juicy – you’re not the only one – you can ogle the car in person, for a small entry fee (£20), when it goes on show at the Ferrari Museum in Maranello from 15th December.
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