Man in the MIRA: What really happens in a full Autocar road test?

The controller asks: “What kind of speeds do you think you’ll be hitting today?” Lane replies that we’re looking to go 150mph-plus, but it’s met with the immediate sucking of air through teeth. “Lots of standing water today, so make sure you recce properly,” says the controller.

It’s not ideal, but our only choice is to press on. This really is the best weather we’ve had since the car arrived at Autocar Towers a good week earlier and Maserati wants the car back at its Slough HQ before the day comes to an end.

With everything signed off and radio checked, the day’s testing can begin. First up is fuel economy testing – a case of setting a speed and doing endless circuits of the track’s bowl.

We follow this with the ‘everyday’ economy test, whose 20mph and 30mph segments feel utterly excruciating when you’ve got clear Tarmac stretching into the distance.

But sunshine begins to slice through the cloud cover and pockets of the road have started to dry out. A quick check of the BBC Weather app suggests we’ll have dry patches for only an hour, so we make a beeline for the Dunlop circuit.

Lane jumps out, rifles through his backpack, pulls out a roll of the world’s skinniest gaffer tape and then attaches our VBox timing gear to the MC20’s windscreen. It feels a little incongruous to me, but it does the job.

I writhe into Lane’s spare crash helmet – I’ve got an absolute whopper of a forehead and this Arai’s a size or two too small – and we head out onto the track. He immediately hits a rhythm: throttle, brake, lift, turn, throttle.

Before I can brace myself, the rear end has snapped straight and we’re off for another round. I may feel like I’m in a tumble dryer, but it’s all key to understanding the car: progressively pushing it harder and asking “awkward questions” of the chassis to see how it responds in an environment you simply couldn’t replicate on the road.

A good half an hour of sickening rounds later, we pull into a quiet lay-by off MIRA’s mile straight so that snapper Jack Harrison can grab all the detail photographs.