FERRARI SP3 DAYTONA

Combining the carbon tub of the LaFerrari and the V12 of the 812 Competizione with F1 construction, this shows what Ferrari's Icona series is all about

- ANDREW FRANKEL

TESTED 26.7.22, LE MANS, FRANCE ON SALE SOLD OUT PRICE £1,700,000  

You probably remember Y Le Mans '66, the 2019 Matt Damon film in which Ford and Carroll Shelby come across the Atlantic to duff up Ferrari on its home turf. Before that race, Ferraris had won seven of the previous eight Le Mans 24 Hours races. It hasn't won another ever since, but that's another story.

What you won't remember is the film Daytona '67, because it hasn't been made yet. Because what Ford tends not to crow about quite so much is that Ferrari returned the compliment the very next time the two teams met to race twice around the clock, at the aforementioned race track the following year.

Two works 4.0-litre Ferrari P4s (well, one was actually technically a P3 modified to P4 specification) faced six factory Ford GT40 MkIIs with 7.0-litre engines and trounced the lot of them. One after another, the thundering Fords broke while the howling Ferraris made mincemeat of them, finishing not only first and second but also with a customer car (a 412P, which was essentially a customer-specification P4) in third to complete a Maranello podium lockout - in Florida.

In Ferrari folklore, if not public consciousness, the event was so fabled that the next road car was never called by its 365 GTB/4 title but instead and simply Daytona. Ferrari itself never called a car a Daytona - not, at least, until now, the car you're looking at being the Daytona SP3. It's the third of Ferrari's Icona cars, after the 812 Superfast-based, barchetta-bodied Monza SP1 and Monza SP2, but the first that you can use properly, on account of it having refinements such as a windscreen and roof.