Plug-in Ferrari SF90 Stradale shocks

Ferrari’s fastest ever car is no longer a V12, and it’s not even a limited-edition hypercar; it’s a plug-in hybrid with a V8 engine and an electric-only range of 25km (apparently owners will use it to get out of the garage without waking their families, before fully deafening their neighbours).

The SF90 Stradale boasts 1000 horsepower (that’s European, CV horsepower, or 736kW), and while rumours that it would smash its way to 100km/h in 1.8 seconds turned out to be hyperbole, it can make the sprint in a Bugatti Veyron-matching 2.5 seconds.

Its most mind-boggling number, however, is its hypercar-humbling 0 to 200km/h time of just 6.7 seconds. Consider that the mid-engined V8 Ferrari it well and truly supersedes, the 488 GTB, takes 8.3 seconds to get to 200km/h, the La Ferrari 7 seconds, and even the awesome McLaren P1 6.9.

And yet the SF90 Stradale (its name celebrates 90 years of Scuderia Ferrari, the F1 team that has donated much of its tech know-how to this incredible vehicle) is not a limited-run, collectible hyper car, it is what Ferrari is calling a “range super car”, meaning it is a production vehicle, available to anyone with north of $1m to spend on a road-going rocket (final pricing has not been confirmed, and it may well be closer to $1.5m by the time our tax system is through with it).

Perhaps most importantly of all, though, the Stradale looks absolutely scintillating in the metal and carbon fibre, with a shape that its designer, Flavio Manzoni, describes as “a concept between a race car and a space ship”.

It is more compact and complete looking than the La Ferrari, and more modern than any Ferrari, with its sleek DRL lights, and new, Corvette-like tail-lights, while its flying buttresses add to what Manzoni calls “the drama of the cabin” which “sits IN the body rather than ON it”.

The space-ship motif became most clear when Manzoni sketched the rear of the car, with its central exhaust pipes and exaggerated diffuser, live for the assembled media at the car’s launch on Ferrari’s test track in Fiorano yesterday.

Ferrari claims the SF90 Stradale contains so many innovations (including five world firsts) that there were too many to list, but one it is clearly proud of it is the new “world premiere” 16-inch digital cluster that sits in front of the driver and is, uniquely, curved and shaped rather than flat. It is absolutely spectacular to look upon, and use, via haptic buttons on the steering wheel. Finally someone has bettered Audi’s Virtual Cockpit.

The interior is functional, futuristic and beautiful - but our favourite touch are the central switches, where you change from Automatic to Manual or engage reverse gear - which are designed to look like the H-pattern gated manual from super cars of old.

The Stradale’s interior is far and away the most impressive the company has ever produced, but that only seems appropriate in what is, to this observer at least, the best-looking car it has made since the fabulous 458.

What is clear from behind is how much lower the engine now sits in the car, and indeed that is all part of an effort to lower the centre of gravity, which was one of the goals of giving this Stradale, not just Ferrari’s existing and award-winning V8 turbo, but an entirely new one, attached to the company’s first ever eight-speed gearbox, which achieves another first of its own; lowering shift times by a staggering 30 per cent (a shift takes 200 milliseconds, compared to 300ms in a 488 Pista).

Another feature of that eye-boggling rear is that it doesn’t have a traditional super-car spoiler, giving it a neater back end. Instead, it gets another world first for a production car, an active-aero feature that it calls a “shut-off Gurney”, or what’s better known, to F1 fans, as DRS (Drag Reduction System).

As speed increases, it sinks down into the rear of the car, rather than popping up as a McLaren or Porsche rear wing does. The result is increased aero at speed for faster cornering, with 390kg of downforce at 250km/h.

Top speed, in case you were wondering, is 340km/h, which sounds only middling for a 1000-horsepower vehicle but, as Ferrari’s chief technology officer, Michael Leiters, admits, the company is not as concerned with top speed - “even on a race track, you’re rarely going to reach 340km/h” - as it is with “endless acceleration” and cornering speeds; “the DNA characteristics of Ferrari”.

The unfeasible power of the Stradale has required Ferrari to fit its first ever “performance all-wheel-drive system”, just to get it all to the ground.
While a hefty 574kW and 800Nm come from the 4.0-litre turbo V8, the remaining 162kW comes from not one but three electric motors, with two on the front axle and another between the engine and that new eight-speed transmission.

This last one is very much borrowed from Scuderia Ferrari, and is even called the MGUK (Motor Generator Unit Kinetic), just as it is in an F1 car.

Putting all this power from the different systems to work has required the application of no less than 25 control systems, including a “full-electric front axle”, known as the RAC-e (Rotation Axis Control Electric), which is “like a hand from above, helping the car go into curves” and allows the car’s brain to control the amount of torque going to each individual wheel independently.

The hybrid technology means more weight, of course, which meant an all-new space frame - featuring a “Multimaterial Approach”, basically using carbon-fibre in the frame for the first time - to set the kerb figure as low as possible at 1570kg.

Another weight-saving measure was removing the reverse gear, with that function now taken up by the car’s electric motors, for silent reverse parking.

The new PHEV tech also means new modes on a new eManettino, which start with eDrive - giving you up to 25km of silent running at speeds of up to 130km/h; Hybrid, which manages power flows for overall efficiency, occasionally switching the engine off, but always supplying max power on demand; Performance, during which the engine is always on; and the exciting-sounding Qualifying.

This last mode, in proper F1 style, gives you maximum power form both the ICE and the electric motors and will last “long enough to lap any race track in the world, including the Nurburgring, of course” according to Leiters.

The SF90 Stradale, then, isn’t just a giant leap forward for Ferrari, and super cars in general, it’s a whole series of them. And there’s no doubt Ferrari will sell as many of them as it decides to make, no matter the price.

Some 2000 of its best customers, including 25 from Australia, were flown into Ferrari HQ yesterday to be shown the car for the first time, and most of them had already ordered one, sight unseen.

They will not be disappointed.