LAMBORGHINI HURACAN STERRATO

Lamborghinis don't win this magazine's annual Britain's Best Driver's Car (BBDC) contest.

It isn't that they lack feel-good factor, or that they aren't rapid enough against the clock when we time the cars for their hot lap of what in recent years has been Anglesey Circuit. Anyone lucky enough to have really uncorked, say, a Huracán STO knows that not for one millisecond does it feel anything less than laugh-out-loud special, and so quick is it that even the act of laughter comes with the risk of swallowing your tongue. No, the reason why Lamborghinis don't win BBDC is because they tend to lack that final 10% of chassis feedback and, for want of a better phrase, three-dimensionality in their handling.

Then along came a Sant'Agata supercar less likely than any other in history to take the BBDC title yet which went and dominated the contest. Honestly, nobody expected the propped-up, knobbly tyred Huracán Sterrato to take overall victory in 2023's event. We have taken some flak for awarding top spot to what some people consider an 'unserious' car. But as ever, we could only call it as we saw and felt it, and when the scores came in, the tango Lambo had pulled off the impossible.

So how did the Sterrato an esoteric fever dream of a semi-experimental, soft-roading supercar conceived by engineers developing the Urus SUV - come to defeat, among others, the Porsche 911 GT3 RS, the Ariel Atom and a skunkworks Prodrive a mere livery short of assuming full WRC Group A character?