PARTY TIME
Eeek! Fourth gear through Anglesey circuit’s dare-you-quick first corner and the BMW M4’s bootlid makes a sudden bid to overtake its infamous nose. Whoa! Banked hairpin behind us, the rear wheels are still spinning down the straight, revs soaring. Ulp. Over the kerb into the blindentry hilltop left-hander, the M4 slews sideways under power and its fat wheel begins racking itself towards the lock-stops.
With the 10-step traction control system turned almost all the way down, M Division’s super-coupe is A Bit of a Handful. Maybe BMW had second thoughts about the grille after sign-off and asked the chassis engineers to ensure that the car only ever comes into view side-on.
One important caveat, however: at this moment, Anglesey is wet. On a clear day, this clifftop track perched on the isle’s edge is the most photogenic circuit in Britain. But right now it’s hard to tell where the Irish Sea ends and the primer-grey sky begins.
And like jump-scares in a second-rate horror movie, the M4’s oversteer moments mostly turn out to be false alarms; nothing to worry about, really. And a bit of a laugh. Once you trust it, you’re soon intentionally using the quick steering and understeer-repelling front-end grip to get a slide going, then relying on the long wheelbase to balance everything, and tapping into the bottomless well of torque to ride it out, all the time wearing a grin wider than the spinning rear Michelins. Not the most intellectual pursuit, perhaps. But addictive. I’m having so much lowbrow fun I’m tempted to crown the M4 the winner here and now. But there are six other cars to drive first, and a special guest to swap notes with.
Guest judge Jamie Chadwick is with us and settling into the Porsche 911 GT3 for a sighting lap. I jump into the passenger seat to take notes. The GT3’s already wowed us this year and Jamie’s taken with it before turning a wheel: ‘This is just fantastic. I’d go for the Touring Package-spec if I were a customer, though; lose the rear wing, so it’s a bit more subtle.’
This is a new breed of 911 GT3: bigger and wider than ever (yet no heavier than before). The rear wing’s borrowed from the 911 RSR Le Mans car and so is the new front axle, with double-wishbone suspension replacing MacPherson struts. That’s a first for roadgoing 911-kind. But it still packs a 4.0-litre flat-six with a 9000rpm redline and a complete absence of turbos, and it’s still available with a manual gearbox – as fitted to this car.
Jamie slots it into first and we head out of the garage. The rain’s easing off, and Jamie experiments with different lines to find the driest part of the track, like a reverse water diviner. Even in these conditions, the grip the GT3 finds is startling. ‘The response from the front end is impressive – this feels different to other Porsches I’ve driven. I really love the weight of the steering, too – lots of feedback,’ gushes Jamie. ⊲
Despite the abundant traction, the flat-six’s revs still occasionally scream skyward as the rear tyres hit a banana-skin patch of water.
‘I like the gear ratios: you can keep it in second gear all the way around the longer hairpins, and it’s easy to short-shift to help traction.’ Jamie’s more than capable of heel-and-toeing but switches on the automatic throttle-blip for downshifts for the first exploratory laps. ‘It’s ridiculously good – somehow it always finds exactly the right amount of revs. And the engine responds so quickly!’ she adds, as the revs zing upward again on the downshift-downshift-downshift approach to Anglesey’s tightest hairpin.
‘I don’t love the seating position – I find it a bit too upright, especially wearing a helmet,’ she shouts over the engine’s racket, though the bucket’s position can be tilted using spanners. ‘Other than that, I don’t have many bad things to say about it…’ Ominous.
She’s right: the GT3 feels born for this. It is in possession of the most responsive front end of any 911 I’ve driven that isn’t wearing slicks; it is razor-sharp. So too is the throttle response, and the overriding impression is of absolute tactility: feedback through steering, pedals and the seat of your pants is so transparent you feel as if you’ve been driving this car all your life. It’s a 503bhp sports car with the engine in the ‘wrong’ place that you feel instantly at one with: quite some achievement.
While we wait for the track to dry a little more (‘Shouldn’t be long – it’s an abrasive surface, and the wind dries the circuit quickly here too,’ says Jamie, with the weather-eye of someone used to waiting out rain at race circuits), we warm up with the two hot hatches.
They’re here because the Ferrari and Lamborghini cost a collective £674,000 (before options), the Alfa and Porsche are both deep into six figures and the M4 starts at £75k. The Golf GTI and scampish Hyundai i20N bring some perspective and, rather than being lambs to the slaughter, they might just provide a rude reality check to the exotica. That said, the Golf looks worryingly expensive at just over £40k…
But in wet conditions it’s the Golf that springs an early surprise. ‘I think that’s my new favourite car,’ says Jamie, stepping from the GTI Clubsport to a timpani accompaniment from its furiously ticking titanium exhaust system (largely responsible for the 45’s £2790 price hike over the mechanically identical regular GTI Clubsport). ‘In these conditions, you know exactly where the limit is and you feel comfortable to push straight away. It rotates really well if you trail the brakes into corners slightly, getting rid of that horrible understeer I’d expected, and then out of the corner it finds a lot of traction and hooks up nicely.’ (The Clubsport has its electronically ⊲
LIKE JUMP SCARES IN A HORROR MOVIE, THE M4’S OVERSTEER MOMENTS MOSTLY TURN OUT TO BE FALSE ALARMS; NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT
controlled mechanical limited-slip diff to thank for that, and the Hyundai gets one too).
On the road the GTI can feel a little onedimensional but here, with extra space to play with, it’s a joy. There’s great stopping power (though, as
Jamie notes, the pedal’s initial response is a little over-sensitive), the honeycomb-grilled nose tucks in neatly to every apex, and the Golf’s attitude can be adjusted neatly with the throttle. More fun than the BMW, though? Believe. ‘I’m having more fun in the GTI than I did in the M4,’ says Jamie. (‘Rear-limited’ is the racing-driver phrase Jamie uses to describe the M4’s handling – ‘scarily tail-happy’ is the rough translation.) ‘The GTI’s more confidence-inspiring, and you can use its full potential in the wet. In the M4 you’re always under the limit, until you’re over it.’
Editor-at-large Chris Chilton pulls in next to us in the Hyundai. ‘It’s less predictable than the Golf in the wet,’ he says. ‘I found myself gathering up a big slide at the first hairpin. But it’s good fun.’
On the move there are good signals immediately. You can feel the i20N’s stiff structure and light weight – at close to 1100kg, it’s by far the lightest car in the test – and, like the bigger i30N we’ve come to love, its quick-flick buttons on the wheel to shortcut settings for exhaust rortiness, steering heaviness, rev-match blippiness and throttle-map sensitivity allow Jekyll/ Hyde toggling at will. (That the M4 also has them isn’t all that surprising given the former M division folk in senior positions at N.)
The locking diff heaves the i20N out of Peel corner, the coastal circuit’s highest point. Ahead, a breathtaking vista: the rain’s gone and mist rises from Snowdonia’s now-visible peaks in the distance. A lap later, the sea sparkles like an H Samuel window display.
The driving seat of the i20N is a great vantage point from which to take it all in: grippy, stable and eager. The knife-edge balance Chris noticed in the wet has gone – it does exactly as it’s bid. But a few dynamic shortcomings are also exposed. The new four-cylinder turbo engine feels surprisingly tight and reluctant to rev towards the top of its range. And barrelling into the first hairpin, there’s a lack of engine braking, almost as if your foot’s still brushing the throttle (the run-on effect of a weighty flywheel).
The H-pattern gearbox is good, foolproof and flickable. But the standard is high in this class, and the Hyundai’s isn’t as sweet as rival ’boxes from Ford and Honda. Still, at least you’re changing gear yourself – Golf Clubsport is paddles-only. And the cheapest car here gives a good account of itself: the Golf is more fun but it’s not £15k more fun.
‘The Hyundai feels at home on track,’ says Jamie. ‘I’d say the balance is better than the Golf in the dry; it’s got a better front end. Here, every gear ratio feels like it needs to be a bit shorter. It’s a circuitspecific thing, but the long, wide hairpins here are too fast for second gear but too tight for third. It could do with a 2.5th gear for more oomph...’
No lack of oomph in the Ferrari SF90 Stradale, here in track-focused Assetto Fiorano spec. Since the surface is dry, it seems only right to jump straight from the cheapest car here into the most dizzyingly expensive.
Ferrari’s first plug-in hybrid can summon 986bhp. Its 4.0-litre twinturbo V8, a (very) thoroughly re-engineered evolution of the 488/F8’s 3.9-litre engine, generates 770bhp on its own. On show beneath the polycarbonate rear screen (slashed with F40-style louvres), the engine’s mounted unfeasibly low in the SF90’s aluminium chassis, nestling up against a carbonfibre bulkhead. It’s like looking down through a glass viewing platform at ancient Roman foundations, the wide-angled, red-crackle-painted vee of cylinders way down there in the shadows.
An electric motor hides between the engine and transmission, driving the rear wheels, and you’ll find two more on the front axle, opening up a brain-scrambling world of both positive and negative torque-vectoring on individual front wheels. The effect is uncanny; around Anglesey’s steeply banked Turn Two, you can be really quite heavy-handed with the SF90, chucking its fast-responding nose towards the apex and then applying far more throttle than feels in any way appropriate. The rear begins to slide and then, spookily, you feel the front tyres almost instantly hooking up, pulling the car straight and helping the scarlet charger claw its way out of the corner, like a rock climber suddenly gaining a strong handhold. ⊲
‘REAR LIMITED’ IS THE RACING DRIVER PHRASE JAMIE USES TO DESCRIBE THE M4 COMPETITION’S HANDLING
THE OVERRIDING IMPRESSION IN THE GT3 IS ONE OF ABSOLUTE TACTILITY: YOU FEEL YOU’VE BEEN DRIVING IT ALL YOUR LIFE
Even spookier is feeling the engine drop out of the equation altogether when you back off in Hybrid mode, the SF90 whispering stealthily along like it’s borne by the wind alone. You hear sounds you ordinarily wouldn’t: grit hitting the wheelarches, and the mechanical sound of expensive pads brushing expensive discs when you brush the brake pedal.
Ahead of you is a dizzying array of information on the digital instrument panel, and controls on the wheel. Some are physical buttons to press and click, some touchpads to swipe and tap. You have four hybrid modes: eDrive, in which the SF90 never troubles its V8; default Hybrid mode, and then Performance and Qualifying, where the V8’s always in play. The latter is the best for lap times, and also longevity, good for several fast laps in a row. To the right, there’s the now-familiar e-manettino with which to switch modes. CT Off is Ferrari’s magic wand, giving you just enough rope to make you believe you’re a driving god without quite taking your stabilisers off entirely. ESC Off is best left to those without a self-preservation instinct. (Even Ferrari’s pro testers are quicker in CT Off.)
Assetto Fiorano spec gives the SF90 a sizeable carbon rear ducktail spoiler (in front of which a second motorised spoiler actively adjusts itsel©), lightweight carbon interior panels, track-specific dampers and titanium springs, and adds another £40k or so to the bottom line.
Unlike all the other cars here bar the Lamborghini, you feel g-forces pulling at your body as the SF90 generates gigantic cornering loads. It’s absurdly fast, of course, but what’s more absurd is how easy it is to go fast – how in control of this implausibly powerful car you feel.
Jamie’s full of praise for the Ferrari. ‘I love the seating position: almost like a racecar, with your legs level ahead of you. Visibility is fantastic: you feel very comfortable using all the road. And it changes direction quicker than the Porsche. The whole thing feels like a racecar – you don’t get that road-car roll,’ she adds, moving her shoulders ponderously, miming a car sinking onto its door handles. ‘And the brake feel [the mark of any well-developed hybrid] – the pedal has such a short travel [a function of the brake-by-wire system], which is great for feel and precision. On the downside, the steering is very light, without much feel, which would be dicult to trust in the wet.’
The SF90 Assetto Fiorano might feel like a racecar, but the most track-focused car here comes from its Sant’Agata neighbours. Lamborghini’s Huracan STO has every automotive EQ slider pushed to full: visually, aurally, dynamically. While the standard Huracan is the purest shape in the Lamborghini range, the STO stretches the body’s coordinates with wickedly barbed aerodynamic fins and surfaces. Unlike the intense but road-orientated Huracan Performante, the STO’s rear-wheel drive, not four, and does away with Lambo’s active ALA aero system (all those fixed fins and manually adjustable wings generate more downforce the old-fashioned way). It uncompromisingly (or compromisingly, depending on your viewpoint) prioritises track performance over road usability; a Lamborghini for trackdays.
Jamie takes to the track first, snatches of the V10’s song making their way to us on the breeze as she brings it up to temperature. This car is loud. The engine note rises to a shriek as it reaches its 8500rpm redline, revs flicking up on downshifts as if directed by a conductor’s baton. A new Akrapovic exhaust makes the glorious 5.2-litre naturally-aspirated V10 even more vocal. You’d need generous noise marshals on most UK trackdays, or your own private track. If you’re shopping for an STO, that might just be an option: it costs £260k.
Jamie hasn’t driven a Lamborghini before and is surprised to hear the original 2014 Huracan understeered. ‘Really? This one doesn’t… The engine and power delivery are amazing – the throttle control is so precise. The gearbox is great, too, very fast and smooth, but the brakes are a little over-sensitive; it’s hard to modulate them.’
Once inside you begin to appreciate just how much Lamborghini’s sacrificed in the name ⊲
YOU FEEL G FORCES PULLING AT YOUR BODY AS THE SF90 GENERATES HUGE CORNERING LOADS
of circuit performance. The key has to go in the glovebox since there’s nowhere else to put it in this totally stripped-out (but beautifully finished) interior. Nor is there really a front boot, the aero nostrils cutting a path through the Huracan’s usual luggage space. There is the regular Huracan Evo’s portrait touchscreen, though, which distils all the ergonomic awkwardness of the Golf and SF90’s touch-sensitive interfaces into one even less usable package.
None of that matters, because the STO is built for driving. The front end is simply glued down. Turn-in is aided by rear-wheel steering totally transparent in its operation; you quickly forget it’s there, much as you do in the 911 GT3. The STO isn’t even on its optional soft track-spec tyres (though the ‘sport’ Bridgestones it’s wearing still have a fairly naughty tread pattern). The steering becomes too heavy in the most aggressive Trofeo mode, but there’s zero kickback and it’s incredibly quick in response.
On the road the STO is hard work, and unashamedly so. The aggressive suspension is uncompromisingly stiff in the two-stage adaptive damping’s firmest mode, and there’s enough road and engine noise to ensure your ears are still ringing the next morning (I write from experience). But on the track it’s an intense and unforgettable experience.
Which is exactly what Alfa Romeo is aiming for with its glorious Giulia GTAm: no rear seats, a body-coloured rollcage and a devilishly pointy rear wing in your rear-view mirror at all times. It costs near enough twice the price of the regular Giulia Quadrifoglio, but in return you get rarity value: 500 will be built, production split between GTAm (for modificato) and marginally less hardcore GTA models. And you get thoroughly reconfigured suspension that gives the GTAm a fantastically cambered, squat stance that makes it look like it’s turned up at a round of the old European Touring Car Championship, not a magazine test.
At first, however, it feels a little out of sorts. There’s more body movement than you expect given the aggressive suspension stance, and if you’re clumsy with it, it can begin to get into a nasty shimmying motion, especially through Anglesey’s scary-quick Church corner. You’re constantly aware you’re driving a big car, not least because it takes a bit of stopping. Even though the GTAm has huge carbon-ceramic discs, it doesn’t decelerate quite as quickly as you’d expect, and Jamie notes its pedal is soft initially and then comes on strong just as you’re trying to blend off the pressure on turn-in.
The steering is light, overly so, although Chris finds its response more measured than the darty-racked M4 and the Alfa more intuitive to powerslide as a result. Both he and Jamie question whether the £156,000 GTAm is actually a better drive than the £75k M4, the more road-usable car.
I must admit, though, I love the GTAm: as an object, for its design details (the ‘no-step’ markings on the front splitter and ’70s-era Autodelta decals, not to mention the silly-but-fun option of a body-coloured fire extinguisher ) and for the sheer brio of building a two-seater, 533bhp road racer in 2021 – even if it’s priced so astronomically it’ll only be enjoyed by a few wealthy collectors.
So, a finishing order. In the wet, the hatches duly do some giant killing but their challenge evaporates as the circuit dries. And neither can give quite as spine-tingling a driving experience on the road as the rest of the cars in this test, even if the Golf is the car we all volunteer to drive home. The Alfa and BMW feel like belligerents in their own private battle. Unanimously the M4’s engine is declared more charismatic and driveable than the Giulia’s, and though both are a handful in the wet, in the dry it’s the heavier BMW that actually feels the more composed and malleable of the two – even if its weight means it’ll chomp through brakes and tyres more quickly than the GTAm.
The Lamborghini is intense and absorbing; a car to leave you genuinely dizzy with excitement, if also in need of a lie down. Ultimately, though, the 911 has a finer degree of feedback and tactility, and the SF90 is capable of equally extreme cornering sensations, and so much more besides… ⊲
INTENSE AND ABSORBING THOUGH THE LAMBORGHINI IS, THE 911 GT3 AND FERRARI SF90 ULTIMATELY OFFER MORE