SF90 STRADALE

WE GET BEHIND THE WHEEL OF THE MOST EXTREME ROAD-LEGAL FERRARI. BUT IS 735KW EVER USEABLE?

- RICHARD LANE

YOU COULD DRIVE this new Ferrari for a month and never find an occasion when the road ahead and your backbone combined adequately for you to send the accelerator pedal to the floor.

The SF90 Stradale is many things: the first-ever mid-engined Ferrari with four-wheel drive, the first Ferrari with true plug-in hybrid capability and the first road-legal Ferrari to possess a thousand metric horsepower. But above all, and for the curious souls who do manage to contrive an opportunity to unleash it, the SF90 is satanically quick.

This is a chance to reacquaint ourselves with an exceedingly complex car with a correspondingly high asking price. The SF90 starts at $846,888, despite the fact that neither it nor its Spider sister is limited-production, as was the LaFerrari.

Without a composite tub to complicate matters, they’re assembled on the same lines as the F8 Tributo and 812 Superfast.

The example seen here is even more expensive, courtesy of the c.$70,000 Assetto Fiorano package, which adds track-day flair. It brings fixed-rate dampers from Formula 1 supplier Multimatic and titanium springs. As such, there’s no supple ‘Bumpy Road’ mode as you get with the regular multi-mode dampers. Also included is a titanium exhaust system, carbon door cards and, in case you missed it, an aggressive rear wing-cum-spoiler, whose central panel can lower to cut off air through-flow by creating an enormous Gurney flap.

But the main event is the plug-in hybrid powertrain. In short, the 8000rpm 4.0-litre V8 from the F8 Tributo is deployed, only with the two turbochargers repositioned for a lower centre of gravity and modifications to the injection for better propagation.