The Ferrari SF90 XX is extreme

“All the technical features we normally use for a [track-only] XX car” were integrated into the plug-in hybrid flagship, said marketing and commercial head Enrico Galliera. These include the lightest seats fitted to a Ferrari to date, contributing to a 10kg overall saving compared with the conventional SF90 Stradale (which weighs 1570kg with every lightweighting option fitted). The XX Spider weighs 1660kg.

Ferrari has yet to disclose the lap time the SF90 XX achieved around Fiorano, but Galliera was bullish in telling Autocar that the gap to the regular SF90 is “significant” – so much so that the brand deems it worthy of a dedicated announcement event later this year. The existing SF90 is the current record holder for road cars at the circuit, having lapped it in 1:19.00 (to the nearest second).

Prices for the SF90 XX started from €770,000 (£660,000) for the Stradale coupé and rose to €850,000 (£730,000) for the Spider. ‘Started’, past tense, is the operative word: all 1398 examples (799 Stradales and 599 Spiders) are already accounted for, having been sold as a “reward” for “our most loyal clients”, according to Galliera. Deliveries of the Stradale begin in the second quarter of 2024, with the Spider following in the final quarter of next year.

SF90 XX was not in Ferrari’s original product plan

Ferrari did not originally intend to develop a more focused version of the SF90, believing it had reached the limit of what was possible with the technology available during its development. Galliera told Autocar: “Normally when we develop a new product, it takes at least a year. The same happened with this car.

“I would say the project was even more complex than a normal project, simply because when we thought of the SF90, we didn’t think about having an evolution of it. That’s why we call it a supercar. And normally a supercar is really something that is trying to achieve the maximum possible in terms of technology at that moment. So further improving the SF90 – with the existing performance of the SF90 – was not an easy job. So basically, the time was the same; the effort was really a lot.”