TEAM SPIRIT

Built to celebrate 90 years of Scuderia Ferrari, the 986bhp, hybrid-powered SF90 Stradale is Maranello’s most powerful road car yet. But is it also its best?

- RICHARD MEADEN

THIS IS A SERIES PRODUCTION CAR. THIS is a series production car. The more exposure you have to the SF90 Stradale, the more you have to remind yourself that rather than a once-a-decade successor to the LaFerrari, this near-as-dammit 1000bhp mid-engined hybrid is the new flagship of Ferrari’s bread and butter range.

The timing is interesting, arriving as it does in the tumultuous age of Covid-19. This much is evidenced from the scenes at both the factory and Fiorano test track, where masked gate guardians zap your forehead with a thermometer before allowing you into the facility, and test cars are meticulously sterilised between drivers.

Ferrari was ravaged by the virus, but everyone is now back at work. Apparently the spectacular Marco Viscontidesigned factory canteen no longer offers freshly made pizzas – grazie Covid, bastardo – but as far as making the fastest, most technologically advanced and commercially viable supercars on the planet is concerned, it’s very much back to business as usual on Via Abetone Inferiore.

It’s also a return to familiar and, I have to say, comforting ground for Ferrari’s model hierarchy. Growing up in the ’70s and ’80s it was always a mid-engined machine that sat atop the range, be it a Berlinetta Boxer or the family of Testarossas that culminated in the F512M. These cars always seemed impossibly exotic to me, so when the elegant and understated 550 came along I found it a little perplexing that Ferrari had apparently stepped away from making show-stopping supercars.