Ferrari SF90 Stradale 2020 Review - International

Any Ferrari with just one motor is expensive enough, so there are no monetary surprises when they deliver four.

The Ferrari SF90 Stradale chimes in at $846,888 in Australia, which is less than expected and $362,000 more than the $484,888 F8 Tributo.

The layout is unfamiliar, with two electric motors up front, and another in the rear, between the heavily updated twin-turbo V8 and the new eight-speed, dual-clutch transmission.

There’s a curved, colour 16-inch instrument cluster screen, complete with multiple view options and touch-style controls on the steering wheel, and it’s easy to follow the battery’s range as it’s being charged and drained, via a simple horizontal bar graph.

There’s another first for Ferrari in the head-up display, and it also has a ‘Ciao, Ferrari’ voice-recognition system.

There’s the usual Manettino on the steering wheel, tweaking performance through wet, sport, track and qualifying modes, but they now need to oversee the power electronics as well.

There’s a second, touch-operated Manettino on the steering wheel to control the powertrain, ranging from EV mode, to Hybrid, Race and Qualifying.

Might as well get straight into it. There are four motors in the Ferrari SF90 Stradale.

Each front wheel has its own 99kW electric motor, with staggering implications for the way the SF90 attacks corners.

There is a mid-mounted biturbo V8 petrol motor and, stuffed between that and the new eight-speed dual-clutch transmission is another electric motor.

There is an axial-flux, Yasa electric motor snuggled up to the V8, but the two front Marelli electric motors are radial-flux. The axial-flux motor is just 72mm thick (Ferrari calls it a ‘pizza’ motor) and punches out 162kW of power and 266Nm of instant torque.

A new 7.9kWh, 180kW battery is filled with pouch cells from South Korea’s SK Innovation. It weighs only 72kg and operates at up to 370 volts, delivering up to 25km of pure EV range.

It all adds up to 1000 horsepower (about 750kW) but the total torque output is harder to nail down. The electric power and torque outputs are limited by how much energy the battery can discharge at any given moment, so that peaks at 162kW.

All three e-motors share their power electronics and inverters, too, and the entire hybrid system adds 270kg.

The tech story doesn’t stop there, because this is the first Ferrari to do a passable impression of an electric car, even for short bursts at up to 130km/h (even in Qualifying mode, they shut down at 210km/h). It’s also the first Ferrari front-wheel drive (in EV mode).

Because of that, the new eight-speed transmission (which is lower, shorter and lighter) has a gap where its reverse cog should be. Instead, Ferrari just uses the front electric motors.

Even the Ferrari SF90 Stradale’s F154 twin-turbo V8 is about 80 per cent new, with a switch to centrally located fuel injectors (necessary, Ferrari explains, to meet EU7 emissions laws).

The V8 jumps to 800Nm of torque at 6000rpm (because what you need with three electric motors is more ICE torque), and it’s up to 574kW of power at 7500rpm (and revs to 8000).

The chassis is a development of the F8 Tributo, with a carbon-fibre bulkhead, a 2650mm wheelbase and a rise in tyre size to Michelin Pilot SportCup2 255/35 ZR20 at the front and 315/30 ZR20 at the back.

The result leaves Ferrari boasting that its charger has 20 per cent better bending stiffness and 40 per cent more torsional rigidity than the Tributo, with no weight cost.

The Ferrari SF90 Stradale is the most bipolar car I’ve ever driven. Ever.

It’s capable of the gentlest, quietest commutes you could ever imagine, yet its 6.7-second blast to 200km/h is a full second quicker than the LaFerrari’s. It pulls to 340km/h and rips to 100km/h in just 2.5 seconds.

It is the first Ferrari whose start button doesn’t trigger a theatrical rasp of a V8 or V12 and it’s the first Ferrari whose start-up isn’t a head-turning event for both the driver and anybody else within a city block.

Unlike any other Ferrari, this really has to be viewed as two separate cars, because it is, except they then merge together seamlessly.

It’s the least threatening 1000hp Ferrari you’ll ever see. All you need to do is push the start button at the bottom of the steering wheel to turn on the accessories, then push it again to start the systems.

Then you pull the gear upshift paddle on the right and cruise silently away.

It’s almost majestic. It’s front-wheel drive. Ferrari didn’t artificially enhance the sound of the two front electric motors, so they whirr and whine exactly as you’d expect them to.

And the SF90 Stradale masquerades as a sheep dressed in a T-Rex’s clothes.

The instant torque of the e-motors is a welcome addition to urban life and the ride is firm and direct, but never hard or aggravating.

It can do this all the way up to 130km/h (we tried and can confirm), and it’s a passable short-range EV.

There are situations where this would be feasibly useful, and it’s so easy to drive that you could flick the Manettino into Wet mode and send a P-plater to the shops in it.

But the other modes are different. The Hybrid mode listens to what mode the manual Manettino is in and decides its mix of power to suit your mood.

It’s happy as an electric car, too, and it’s shocking to finally hear, when you dab the accelerator pedal a little more firmly, the V8 snap into life, barking and tearing at the air, with a heavy, breathy rasp on the intake and whip-like rev changes.

All four motors are swung into action at some point in the Hybrid mode, with some of them dropping out for faster work, or chiming in for slower work.

It shifts the responsibilities around the car seamlessly, and though you can easily figure out when the front motors are working, the rear e-motor is more mysterious.

Race and Qualifying modes are beast modes, with the V8 running the whole time for both speed and to constantly charge the battery (it can also do this with braking regeneration, and via a plug-in cable).

It’s aggressive enough in Race mode, but Qualifying mode is eye-popping.

It’s hard to remember a Ferrari backrest that’s ever had to take this much punishment and you’d better love corners, because you’ll be meeting a lot of them.

On the road, its Qualifying mode obliterates everything between corner exits and braking points and it’s so fast that you never, ever have respite and your core muscles will need strengthening.

There is a wall of acceleration, all the time. Yes, there’s the V8 bellowing deeply behind you, but there are no torque holes, no pauses, no moments when not much happens. It’s a horizontal hydraulic press of phenomenal force every single time you sniff the accelerator.

But then the tricky part comes. I’d assumed that it would excel on the way out of corners, because of its torque-vectoring front e-motors. And it does.

The shock is the way the e-motors work from the turn-in point to the apex of any corner you like. Even on blisteringly quick bends.

They do their work to navigate the nose precisely, unambiguously where you want it to be. Point it, turn in at ludicrous pace and the front e-motors just sort out the physics and engineering for you.

They give you so much more turning confidence that you soon find yourself not even bothering to rotate the car into the apex, because that’s no longer necessary to extract its best.

It’s proofed against the stresses of high-speed corners, with its mass, powertrain and biting aerodynamics suggesting you attack bends harder and harder, then the front motors and the skid-control systems working perceptibly to bring it back in line when you overcook it.

You end up flailing about for ways to make it run out of grip, and even when it does, it’s never a drifting loon like an F8 Tributo or a 488 Pista. It’s more like a German than a passionate Italian, and it prefers to slide only when it adds pace, rather than fun.

While the powertrain dominates what the Ferrari SF90 Stradale is all about, there are many more impressive bits here.

The electric power steering delivers brilliant levels of heft and feedback, the fly-by-wire brake system feels seamless, the suspension walks and soaks up the worst of the awful Emilia Romagna roads with disdain (apart from some sharp-edged bump noise) and the instrument cluster is superb to look at, even if it’s a pain to operate.

Apart from fiddly navigation around the new, coloured and curved instrument cluster, the Ferrari SF90 Stradale is a reality-warping distortion field, more than a car.

The thing is that it just does it all so very easily, never feeling flustered or bothered about anything either you or the road throws at it.

It’s as though it knows its tech is up to the job of saving your dumb butt and still being fast so it begs you to challenge it.

It’s tech you feel for what it does, not for its own sake, and it’s so far ahead of what everybody else is doing in series production that it’s given Ferrari a decade of social legitimacy to keep building everything else.

Of course, the Ferrari SF90 Stradale is extraordinarily expensive, to go with every other extraordinary thing it does.

It’s the least ‘Ferrari’ Ferrari in history, too, but it also feels like the first Ferrari you could live with on any road, in any traffic, every single day of the year.

How much does the 2020 Ferrari SF90 Stradale cost?
Price: $846,888 (plus on-road costs)
Available: Late 2020
Engine: 4.0-litre twin-turbo petrol V8
Engine output: 574kW/800Nm
Total electric power: 360kW
Front electric motors: 99kW each
Battery: 7.2kWh pouch-cell
Electric range: 25km (WLTP)
Maximum EV speed: 135km/h
Transmission: Eight-speed dual-clutch automatic
Dry weight: 1600kg (1570kg with Assetto Fiorano pack)
Weight distribution: 45/55% front/rear
Boot capacity: 74 litres
Fuel capacity: 68 litres
Maximum speed: 340km/h
0-100km/h: 2.5 seconds
0-200km/h: 6.7 seconds
100km/h – 0: 29.5 metres
Fiorano lap time: 1:19
Fuel: TBC
CO2: TBC
Safety rating: TBC