Spoiler Alert: Hardcore Ferrari SF90 Version Speciale Caught Testing At Nürburging With Huge Rear Wing

Ferrari likes to think its cars stand head and shoulders over every other exotic, but there’s one area where Maranello’s products simply don’t measure up. When it comes to spoiler height, Ferrari always comes up short.

The Italian firm uses fixed wings on its GT3 racing cars, but even the most hardcore versions of its road cars are fitted with discrete adaptive spoilers that retract into the bodywork when not needed so as not to add unnecessary drag or interrupt the purity of the design. That sets Ferrari’s cars apart from its rivals’ track-ready road cars, but it looks like the team at Maranello might be having a change of heart.

Our spy photographers have already spotted the upcoming hardcore version of the SF90 hybrid numerous times, a car some are calling the SF90 VS, or Version Speciale. But in every recent sighting, it’s been fitted with fairly standard-looking aero devices. This time though, Ferrari’s engineers have been seen putting two VS test cars through their paces at Germany’s Nürburgring: one with the familiar built-in bridge rear spoiler and another decked out with a gigantic fixed rear wing bolted to the chassis with two pylons.

The spoiler on the red car features large triangular end planes, and the pylons mount to the underside of the spoiler rather than on the top side like we’ve seen on cars like the new Porsche 911 GT3 road car and Ferrari’s own 296 GT3 racer. And while it doesn’t appear to be electronically moveable unless there are some motors hidden beneath the rear bodywork, we can see the pylons come in two parts allowing mechanics to manually adjust the angle of the wing and the amount of downforce in the garage before heading out onto the track.

It’s also worth mentioning that while the silver car doesn’t have the big wing fitted, it probably has done in the past or will in the future because it has the same cutouts in the rear panel, and its standard SF90 rear spoiler has been modified to allow clearance for the fixed wing’s pylons.

Other than the difference in spoiler philosophy and subtly different five-spoke wheel designs the winged red car and wing-less silver car appear to be almost identical. Both have extended front splitters and you can bet that there’s a ton of extra aero work going on, plus modifications to the 986 bhp (1,000 PS) twin-turbo hybrid V8 and all-wheel drive system that we won’t find out about until Ferrari is good and ready to show us.

When will that be? We already know that Ferrari is going to be busy unveiling the Purosangue crossover this fall, so our guess is we’ll find out more about the SF90 VS early in 2023. Would you like to see Ferrari throw some big fixed wings on its road cars or do you prefer the low-key approach?