Ferrari is testing an even more hardcore F80, and it leaked through a confused Reddit post
Ferrari did not reveal the F80 XX. Someone at a Portuguese circuit did, by accident.
Photographs of a heavily modified Ferrari F80, taken at the Portimao circuit in Portugal in late July, have been circulating after a passer-by posted them without appearing to know what they had caught on camera. Enthusiasts identified it within hours as the F80 XX, the track-only version of Ferrari's 1,200 hp hybrid hypercar. Ferrari has confirmed nothing, though it quietly filed an F80 XX trademark in the spring.
How it surfaced
The grainy images landed on Reddit, on a forum where people post cars they cannot place and wait for someone to name them. This time the answer came fast. The car was running at Portimao with almost no disguise, which is unusual for a Ferrari this secret and this far from a launch, and it did not take long for the crowd to work out what it was looking at.
What is different
The changes are all about downforce. The standard F80's active rear spoiler has been replaced by a large fixed wing on swan-neck mounts, the sort you find on a GT racing car rather than a road hypercar. There is a more aggressive front splitter, a noticeably bigger rear diffuser and a small fin on the roof. The exhausts have moved too, exiting through the engine cover beneath the wing instead of the rear bumper.
What the XX badge actually means
XX is Ferrari's most exclusive club. Cars like the FXX, 599XX and FXX-K are track-only machines, not road legal, sold to a hand-picked group of clients who run them at private Ferrari track days and, in effect, help develop future technology. You do not order one. Ferrari decides whether you are the sort of owner who gets offered one.
The power question
Here is the part nobody can confirm yet. The road-going F80 already produces 1,200 hp from a 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6 paired with an F1-derived electric front axle. Whether the XX raises that figure or simply reworks the aerodynamics, weight, brakes and chassis settings for the track is not known. Given how the XX cars have always worked, more downforce is a safer bet than more power, but nothing is confirmed, so treat any number carefully.
It is not the only hardcore F80
Ferrari has been busy at the extreme end of this range. It already offers a track-only sport exhaust that deletes the catalytic converters for a louder, angrier sound, and an open-top F80 Aperta sits at the other end of the line-up. An F80 XX would be the hardest version of all, the one built purely to lap.
When we might see it
There is no official reveal date. A trademark filing in the spring and undisguised testing now suggest Ferrari is not far from showing it properly. Nothing has been said about production numbers or price, but XX cars are always tiny in number and sit well beyond the already extraordinary cost of the road car.
AutoNext Take
There is something fitting about the most secretive car Ferrari builds being outed by a stranger who thought they were simply photographing an interesting car. The F80 XX is not a machine most of us will ever see in the metal, let alone drive, and Ferrari would plainly have preferred to choose the moment it was shown. It did not get to.
What we can say is that a track-only F80, freed from the need to be road legal and handed proper race-car aerodynamics, is about as focused as a modern hypercar gets. Whether it makes more than 1,200 hp almost does not matter. On a car like this the downforce is the headline and the exclusivity is the price of admission. We will be watching for the official reveal, ideally before another bystander beats Ferrari to it.
*Blurry spy shots enhanced through AI
