As 2022 rolls in, check out our Sports Car Giant Test as we enjoy some of 2021's greats all in one place
296bhp @ 5300rpm, 295lb ft @ 2000rpm, 5.6sec 0-62mph, 166mph, 38.1mpg, 168g/km CO2Joining the CAR team for Sports Car Giant Test 2021 is reigning W Series champion and Williams F1 development driver Jamie Chadwick.
Hell, lapping Anglesey with us might even come in handy during the course of her development driving for the Williams F1 team... Jamie signed with the squad in 2019, and in Friday practice at the F1 weekends that don't clash with W Series she's often behind the wheel of the team's simulator back at base, sending real-time set-up feedback to the team at the track.
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. 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.
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.
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.' 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.
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.
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 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.'
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 and marginally less hardcore GTA models.
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.
And the addition of the Assetto Fiorano package has had a similar effect on the SF90, a car I remember feeling incredibly refined in standard form at the launch in Italy last year. But neither is unusable. We're not talking wheel-hopping, vision-blurring stiffness, just a purer focus on handling that serves both well on the track – and serves to dim any GT strengths on the road by allowing tyre roar and small bumps in the road surface to permeate the cabin.
Of the two it's the Ferrari that feels most different away from Anglesey. On track, other than satisfying our curiosity to see what a hypercar feels like in EV mode or in Hybrid mode , we'd had the e-manettino hybrid controller in Performance or Qualifying, to keep the V8 in play at all times. You could argue that the GT3's 9000rpm redline is similarly out of reach, and that even with 'just' 503bhp the 911 is also ridiculously over-endowed. But the Porsche's power output feels well judged, while the modest 347lb ft of torque means that you must work for your reward. That work also involves, should you choose it, hustling a six-speed manual gearbox with a deliciously mechanical feel.
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