Ferrari Daytona SP3 review

Today, in this F140HC configuration unique for the SP3, it doles out 829bhp at a staggering 9250rpm, an increase in specific output from the Enzo’s 109bhp per litre to almost 128bhp per litre. For your information, the LaFerrari motor was the 6.3-litre F140FE, yielding 789bhp at 9000rpm not counting hybrid assistance. We seem to say it every time we drive a new V12 Ferrari, but this really does look like the ultimate naturally aspirated motor of this type Ferrari will produce.

What the SP3 is not, and it is somehow something of relief to say so, is a track day weapon. Ferrari doesn’t even quote a Fiorano lap time, which it does for almost all its cars. It wears bespoke Pirelli Corsa rubber, but not chocolate soft, surgically smooth Trofeo Rs, which I was particularly glad to note when it started to rain. It is, to borrow a time honoured phrase, not how fast you go, but how you go fast.

To which end I thought it might be lighter than it is. Indeed it is curious that it is not. Ferrari quotes 1485kg for the car, but remember this is Maranello-speak, so that’s a dry weight with all lightest options fitted. Now if you look on the interweb you’ll find almost as many different weights quoted for the LaFerrari as there entries for the car itself, but my original launch story referred to a kerb (ie wet, DIN) weight of 1410kg.

If you reckon converting a dry to kerb weight tends to add around 100kg, that makes the LaFerrari on paper about 175kg lighter than the SP3. That’s 175kg despite the LaFerrari having an entire secondary power source – its hybrid drive – to cart about the place. Now, if it is safe to assume the SP3 is not lighter than Ferrari claims, that means either that the LaFerrari was a whole lot heavier than we thought, or the SP3 has gained a couple of big lads’ worth of avoirdupois from who knows where.

Does it matter when there’s 829bhp doing the talking in a car not bothered about lap times? We’re about to find out.

You descend into the SP3’s midst via a dihedral door aperture. There’s a wide sill and those of later years, lengthy dimensions and a certain stiffness of limb (i.e. me) will have to pull their left leg in after them. Getting out is harder still, and comes with the added jeopardy of banging your bonce on the door as you try to stand up though, to be fair, unless actually concussed, it’s not a mistake you’re going to make twice.

The seats are thin but well-shaped, comfortable and visually joined together in leather across the thin central tunnel, the look another cap doff to the 1960s racers and only possible due to their fixed positions. Ahead is a large central rev-counter flanked by two screens which is not the single full width screen used by the latest Ferraris like the 296 GTB and SF90 Stradale, but something rather closer to that found in a LaFerrari, which should surprise precisely no one. Press the button on the bottom of the steering wheel’s boss and the V12 spins into raucous life.

And for a while, it’s fine just to sit there and listen to it. You can hear the clatter, whizz and click of all that valve gear and you realise this engine is more interesting, engaging and exciting at idle than any electric motor could ever manage running flat out.

Pull a paddle and make like Moses, a red car parting a sea of onlookers. Visibility is remarkably good for a low volume recreational car like this, aided by a camera replacing the rear-view mirror. And it is as well because this car is wide, over two metres across the bows, more by a distance than the LaFerrari. And when I drove that in Italy, I remember giving up trying to drive it fast on the traditional test routes in the hills above Maranello for exactly that reason. Happily, and today at least, the roads around Le Mans (at least once clear of Classic traffic) are both quieter and considerably wider. So soon I can tug a left paddle a couple of times, plant the boot and go.

I love the anticipation. This V12 is over four times the size and 75 years the junior of Ferrari’s first, but both require you to wait before they will deliver their very different levels of performance. The SP3 engine is fractionally different to Ferrari’s previous most powerful V12, that seen in the 812 Competizione, and not only requires 9250rpm to deliver all 829bhp (10bhp more than the Comp motor), but 7250rpm before it hits maximum torque, as high a peak torque speed as I can recall a road car possessing. Now you could of course pull back on that paddle again and go right there, but a naturally aspirated Ferrari V12 is not a device for instant gratification like, say, a hybrid twin-turbo V8. This is not a wham bam machine; it is something rare and special. Something to be savoured.

So let it build. At 3000rpm, the V12 is just lifting the side of an upper lip, showing a tooth or two. At 4000rpm it’s properly snarling at you. But the lunge doesn’t come, not yet. Not until it’s past 5000rpm does it spear you forward. And the ridiculous thing is that on the journey from idle to rev-limiter you’re not yet quite halfway. The torque peak may be beyond 7000rpm, but in truth it seems to be hauling as hard as it ever will by 6000rpm, the snarl now a yowl, magnificent in volume, majestic in tone.

Is this the Ferrari’s finest sounding V12? Close, but not quite: perhaps it’s the installation behind me, the carbon tub or the roof panel that I’ve left in position, but it’s not quite so enthralling as the sound this engine makes in the 812 GTS, nor so sweet as some of the earlier efforts – a 3-litre Colombo springs readily to mind – but it is still hauntingly, mesmerizingly wonderful.

How fast? Well bloody fast, obviously. Ferrari quotes a 0-62mph time of 2.86 seconds. Were you to drive a car of this potential 20 years ago, you’d think the world had gone stark staring mad. Today we have to subdivide that insanity. It’s not as quick as the LaFerrari was nearly a decade ago, because it has less power and apparently more weight. Its power to weight ratio is in fact similar to that of the new 296 GTB, a car with half the cylinders and less than half the engine capacity. And I bet that V6 hits both harder and sooner than this V12.

But as mentioned, seeing how fast it can go was never a top priority for the SP3, and when you’re in the rarefied air where you need to subdivide tenths of a second in a sub-three 0-62mph run down to hundredths, you can say that for most multi-millionaires most of the time, it’s plenty fast enough.

What matters far more is how this car feels and, consequently, how it makes you feel. The roads are now open, deserted and fast. If this car has an element in which to be, this, surely is it. And in the way it corners so flat and fast, yet never lets you forget there’s a sizeable, multi-cylinder powerhouse behind your right ear, it does evoke certain memories of the time many moons ago when I was lucky enough to drive a 412P.

But it is not a car in which I felt instantly at home. The width is always intimidating, less so on these roads than others, but you have to be precise and with steering that is both very direct and not overladen with feel. Concentrate hard and it will string together left and right sweeping apexes with an aplomb that’s rare in any car of any price, but it’s a car that needs learning. And perhaps that’s no bad thing: maybe you don’t want such an exotic, glamorous device to reveal all its secrets on the first date; it is also true that after my allotted 3.5 hours of time in the road were up and I’d delivered the SP3 back to its crowds of adoring well-wishers at Le Mans, I still felt I was getting to know it.

Really, however, I wanted to drive it on a track, not to see how fast either I or it could go, but because I expect that’s where its best: a place where you have the width to take proper lines through corners, where there’s no worry about something coming the other way, where you always know which way the road goes so you can always aim it precisely and, above all, somewhere you can let that V12 go and go and go.

Only once did I feel it slide under me, when we were doing some shots down at Indianapolis and a short shower dampened the circuit. I’d turned everything off as I often do in such cars and I felt first the front then the rear tyres let go as they hit water. And do you know what? It was just fine. More than in fact: between us we’d rounded everything up so quickly I wanted to go back and do it again. Until I realised there were already several hundred people watching and recording the action on their telephones. The mere thought of the YouTube clip that would be posted mere seconds after me dumping a Daytona SP3 in the gravel was enough to dissuade me from such folly.

You can see why Ferrari makes cars like this: the price is over double what it charged for the LaFerrari which was an altogether more challenging feat of engineering, and it will make more of them too. Given that a lot of that engineering was also able to be repurposed for the SP3, it’s clearly very good business indeed.

Not that I begrudge Ferrari that, nor that the SP3 is more compelling as a piece of art than as an ultimate driving machine. Every car must have a purpose and the SP3’s is to scrape the skin from the jaws of all who see it, and I can confirm that in this preferred role it is absolutely outstanding. Quite possibly second to none.

But it does seem to me that it leaves room for another kind of Ferrari, one whose only purpose is to be the greatest driving machine in Maranello history. If anyone has the knowhow and the skillsets to create the ultimate ultralight, compact, stripped back road racer, it is Ferrari. It did it once, 35 years ago, called the result the F40 and it remains the greatest road car I have ever driven. Half a lifetime later, and before it is too late, perhaps it is time for another?