The 2023 Ferrari Daytona SP3 Is Like a Rock. Or a Rocket.

Think of the Ferrari Daytona SP3 as a rock. Of course, it is not a rock. Nor does it share many of the characteristics of rocks. Though it is heavy by rock standards, at 3274 pounds dry, it is light by the standards of most modern sports cars. It is not craggy like a granite boulder, or ill-tempered yet lighthearted like Marvel Comics’ The Thing. But as he sits in the brutal Belgian heat, about 50 or so miles from Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, the SP3’s senior designer, Jason Furtado, keeps insisting the Daytona SP3’s exterior is inspired by a particular sasso. That means stone in Italian. In this instance, a sleek one used for skipping across water.

This story originally appeared in Volume 13 of Road & Track.

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It’s a weird comparison, but it makes sense. “I think about the SP3 as a car with many layers,” explains Furtado, who worked for three years under Ferrari chief designer Flavio Manzoni to mold the lines of this $2.3 million stunner. There are layers to the car itself, much like the strata in sedimentary rocks. It is functional—the worn edges make a skipping stone hydrodynamic and a car aerodynamic. It has a subtlety to it—on the SP3 there are no wing elements and very little ostentation beyond overwhelming, knee-­buckling physical presence.

“The best Ferrari designs have just two lines,” Furtado says. “A straight one and a curve that runs along it. This is the best Ferrari design.”

There are other layers to the SP3: the engineering, the performance, and, crucially, its place in history. The Daytona is part of the limited-­edition Icona series of throwbacks to cars that so far includes just the Monza SP1 and SP2, curious modern machines without windshields that pay homage to the 250 Testa Rossa, the 166 MM, and the 750 Monza. The SP1 is so dead set on reproducing that original feel that it offers only one seat. The SP2, tossing aside heritage with almost malevolent disregard, adds a second. Neither fully modern nor overtly retro in design, the Icona cars are probably best thought of as concept cars for the road (this even though neither of the Monzas is street-legal in the U.S.).

The SP3 feels informed by but not beholden to nostalgia. In fact, Furtado bridles at the very concept of nostalgia. “In the original Greek, the second half of that word means ‘pain.’” But it does use every modern piece of engineering and design magic to elicit a very specific moment in history, from which it derives its name: Daytona.

And that moment is the afternoon of February 6, 1967. On that day, Ferrari pulled off what Enzo himself considered the most spectacular feat in company history when it took primo, secondo, and terzo at the 24 Hours of Daytona. It was the first round of that year’s International World Sports Car Championship and the middle of a very personal battle with Henry Ford II, who had earlier offended Enzo by offering to buy his company and who instead began developing the Ford GT to vanquish the prickly Italian where it would hurt him the most: on the racetrack.

On that winter day in Florida, on Ford’s turf, the three Ferraris finished in this order: two factory team prototypes, the 330 P3/4 and the 330 P4, and the factory-built customer car, the 412 P. It was a pinnacle of then-chief engineer Mauro Forghieri’s homing in on the three racing-car fundamentals: engine, chassis, and aerodynamics.

So that’s the heritage the Daytona SP3 honors. No pressure.