FIRST DRIVE: NEW Ferrari Daytona SP3 - £2m, 828bhp N/A V12 Hypercar | Top Gear

You're going to hear me talk a lot in this video about the styling of this car, about its historical importance, about why Ferrari built this car, blah blah blah, so it's easy to forget that when you boil it down, what we have here is A naturally aspirated mid-engine V12 with no hybrid assistance is in many ways an analog Ferrari, which is a very attractive proposition, but let's not dwell too much on that because it's a gas pedal and it's a quiet country road, well, it doesn't go To be silent for a long time, is the engine the magnificent naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12 from the 812 superfast, but uncorked a fraction more with upgraded internals like titanium rods for 828 brake horsepower that make it in the most powerful engine that Ferrari has ever installed in a road car?

It also revs to nine thousand five hundred rpm, the same redline as the 812 competition, only in many ways in its all-carbon construction in the way these seats are attached directly to the carbon tub, this car shares DNA with the la

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What it doesn't share is the Ferrari's hybrid system, its electronically assisted devastating power, but honestly, 62 in 2.85 seconds and a top speed of 211 miles per hour isn't bad at all. Are the power figures now and performance that I just mentioned for this car? They are practically identical to the ones you get in the much cheaper v6 hybrid GTB, but honestly I don't care, I have twice as many cylinders, I'm not missing any electric motor here and every time I put my foot down I get that noise, let's see if we can get nine and a half, come on, it's one of the best noises in the world, isn't it?

The

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box is a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic. A manual would apparently have been a nostalgic step too far. The whole thing weighs 1,485 kilograms dry, just a few kilograms more than a 296 GTB, has 230 kilograms of downforce at 124 miles per hour and features the latest version of Ferrari's sideslip control software that allows the immortals to drift. Like the gods, yeah, I'm not sure. I'm going to be hanging my tail today on these slightly tight and slightly damp Belgian back roads because this car costs £2 million. They are only building 599 of them. They are all sold out. This is a real customer's car and I prefer. my bed with no horse head in it, the good news is you don't need to be on some sort of qualifying lap to really enjoy driving this car, yes it's incredibly low and incredibly wide, it feels huge on the road when I look at it.

My mirrors and I love the position of the mirrors on the fins. By the way, the distance between the mirrors that there is less distance for your eyes to move is filled with that rear wheel arch. You're always aware that the back of the car is wider than the front and then you get to the seats, there's only one seating position, it's reclined, they want to give you spicy vibes here but honestly I thought it was going to be spicier, louder and harder here, but we actually turn it into a wet sport or race. Click here to access bumpy road mode and you can cover great distances in this car.

It also has that bit of Ferrari magic where it manages to make 800 horsepower feel almost friendly, definitely approachable, as if the chassis and electronics were always above any monumental power. that engine can produce and then in turn makes the

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r, my little self, feel more confident as a better

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r than he actually is. I really feel like I have complete confidence that this car is not going to bite me, it's not going to spit me out. that hedge unless of course you turn everything off and push it with the stick okay so let's break this driving experience down a little bit more and we'll start with the steering.

Now Ferraris are famous for having fast steering, but also a super light feeling on the grill, which I personally like, I know others don't, but this is a little different, it's still a very, very fast relationship and if you breathe from off-center, the front of the car just darts where you want to go, I love it, it feels connected, it feels responsive, it feels exactly like a car trying to emulate 60s sports prototypes should at the same time. which they've also done add a little extra weight to it, a little extra weight so you can get some of that real '60s race car flavor.

The brakes are phenomenal. I'll be honest. I don't go near your limits on this road. Are here. They do their job fantastically. Then we come to the throttle response. As the rain starts to hit the windshield because it's easy to forget when you drive turbocharged engines all the time, how magical the throttle response is on a naturally aspirated engine, it's there when you want it and the fantastic thing about this engine is from 3000 rpm up to nine thousand five hundred rpm, you have this incredible linear acceleration, the feeling is that you have as much acceleration as you could ever need at any time, it really is very, very special, now you can You have to be very high in Ferrari's little black book for that invite you to spend £2 million on one of these cars, but I'm telling you, it's not a members-only driving experience, it invites you to participate, everyone's invited, it wants to play.

In no way does this car feel harsh and overly specialist or just perfect inside like the 296 gtb. You get a large instrument cluster and then touch-sensitive controls for the air conditioning at the bottom of the dash and more touch panels. on the steering wheel which I kept brushing every time we turned a corner, but I'll forgive it on this occasion because the purpose of this car is to offer a pure touch of nostalgia and the

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box controls are designed to look like a manual door opener in miniature. The windshield, reclined seat position and high shoulder line do just that.

Funnily enough, I've never raced a 1960s Ferrari sports prototype, but someone who has one assures me that the overall driving position and feeling of confinement isn't far off. and then we arrived at spa, one of the fastest and most famous race tracks in the world, especially the original 14 kilometer long street circuit, which was and still is the mecca of endurance racing, the scene of countless Ferrari victories and remains one of the definitive tests of a driver's career. A car's nerves and capability are the perfect place, in other words, to push the Daytona SP3 to its limits.

Yes, unfortunately, I quote the instructions Ferrari gave me for this event due to the value of the car and the fact that it is a limited edition model. In the spa they are limited to 70 kilometers per hour God, this is frustrating. I'm in one of the most exciting cars in the world on one of the fastest tracks in the world and I can't, I can't drive it like the engineers intended, at least not yet. I can tell my friends that I drove a Ferrari Daytona SP3 all over Rouge without picking it up, technically true, so why are we here?

So, you see, Ferrari claims it's not retro. You won't see any direct resurrection like the new Lamborghini Countach. but it likes to talk a lot about its history, that's why I introduced the icona range and this is the third model in the icona range, hence the name sp3. The

first

two were the rather silly monza sp1 and sp2 without a windshield, but this is how it is. pays homage to the sports racing prototypes of the 60s, confusingly the name is not a nod to the front engine shark gt of the 60s, also known as the 365 gtb4, but rather an homage to

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's famous one two three at the 1967 24 hours of

daytona

, where all three cars, a 330 p 3 4 30 p4 and a 412 p, crossed the line in choreographed unison to rub Ford's nose on his own turf, sweet, sweet revenge for the road that the gt40 had left to the ferraris six months earlier in the mom the The style is a melting pot of references not only from one car, but from many.

Those bulging front wings have a bit of the 512s and 712am runs on them. The rearview mirrors have been moved from the doors to the front spoilers in classic drag racer style. The slotted rear end is an unexpected nod to Pinum Farina's 1968 Ferrari 250 P5 concept car. Yeah, they don't do concepts like that anymore. They put all that in a pot and this is what you end up with, so let's take a look. this and appreciate some of the details and we start here with my personal favorite, which is the headlights that have eyelids that retract when you turn on the main lights.

Now we will take a cutaway shot so you can appreciate it in all its splendor. but that's a nod to the pop-up headlights of supercars from the '70s and '80s, a lovely touch now that we come down here, the front wheel arch, like when you look at the car from the front dead angle, the way it They rise and rise. right above the front wheel which is probably the most obvious nod to the drag racers of the '60s and above that arch is the rear view mirror so they've moved from the door to these front arches I think it works very well it actually looks good and then you get to the door now this is very interesting because the inlet for the rear mounted radiator is actually at the top front of the door so you have a tunnel going through the door and goes into the radiator and what you end up with is this.

Really clean side profile here, this pinched waist where you'd normally have a big hole in most modern supercars, it's actually probably the most distinctive thing about the surface of this car, it now has a removable roof, a removable tiger roof from carbon fiber, so I'm going to open these butterfly doors, give you a look at them, oh, very pretty and I'm going to need my glamorous assistant for this make. Okay, we have to figure out how to remove this roof. You might want to speed this up a bit. Get up and put some Charlie Chaplin music on because this might take a while.

There we go now. There is nowhere to put it in the front. There is nowhere to put it in the back of the car. So mark, do you think you can handle it there? Throw it in the highest car and close the door please good man, right now with the roof removed, not only can you see all the mess I made inside the cabin today, but you can also appreciate something else, which is this . wraparound windshield, so the way it wraps around you and actually this straight line cut into the top of the windshield is a very distinctive feature that you'll see when we include some historical photographs of the races we're talking about.

Okay, keep going down the side of the car. More shots here. I love this center column that runs right down the middle of the car. And there's your v12 6.58 v12 in full screen for everyone to see now. Not this car really. It doesn't have active aerodynamics, so you just have a full-width spoiler here, but it's actually a little bit more than just a lip on the bodywork that lifts up the rear of the car and then you have the slats that it didn't initially have. I'm sure, but now I think they absolutely do the styling of the car and then you have these two huge exhaust pipes and they raised them above the license plate, above the diffuser, and the reason is that you can have this.

Much larger and deeper dual level diffuser underneath providing all the downforce. The big question is if I like it. I'll be honest, when we

first

saw photos of this car, yes, I thought it was too picky, it didn't catch my attention at first. but I have to say, and I know it's a little cliché, that when you're here seeing it in person and spending time with it, I still think it's too stylized. I still think they tried to cram too many style elements into one. canvas, but when you're standing next to it, when you're driving around the paddock here at the spa, with everyone filming it on their phones and giving you the thumbs up and yelling and screaming, you realize that it has a certain presence, this car, it's everything drama.

Marmite styling and draconian speed limits aside, even having the opportunity to drive such an exotic car is a considerable privilege, but the thrill for me is not the price for rarity, it's the execution of the most powerful engine in Ferrari, a naturally aspirated v12 without electricity restrictions. placed behind the driver and then surrounded by carbon and incomparable electronics that feel totally natural and flatter the clumsy driver behind the wheel. It's about as exciting as it gets for a car with a license plate. Ferrari really can't go wrong. Right now, yes, it's true that it's about to jump on the SUV bandwagon with the pure sang SUV that will be revealed later this year, boo, but yeah, we'll reserve judgment on that one until we see it, but meanwhile.

With special projects like this coming up, the 296 GTB, after some issues with the SF90, has pretty much perfected the whole hybrid supercar thing and is back on its winning ways in F1. It really is a company at the peak of its powers, a bit like this car sorry speed limit naughty boy you