CAUTION! HIGH BOLTAGE

THE FIRST THING you want to know about the Rimac Nevera is how it feels to launch-control an electric hypercar with twice the power of a modern Formula 1 car.

I wondered that too, and casually decimating the Bugatti Chiron’s production-car standing-quarter record was very nearly the first thing I did in a Nevera. I was given mine on the runway of a quiet provincial airport in Croatia, its nose already pointing down the strip towards the cones that marked the end of the quarter-mile. Mate Rimac was there and quite happy for me to knock out a new record with my very first push of the throttle, so confident was he of the ease and safety with which his car will do it.

That might have made for a better tale, but given that there were still damp patches on the concrete and the wide painted runway markings from the morning’s rain I thought I’d recce the track and the car first. You might call it cowardice. I call it being 46. So I rolled gently to the end of the runway, using only half throttle and a mere thousand horsepower or so, feeling out the Nevera’s brakes and steering before swinging around and back to the start line.

The launch procedure is pretty simple. Come to a halt. Choose track mode with the nearer of the two in-house CNC-milled aluminium rotary controllers that sprout from the dash like snail’s antennae, making full power available to the motors on each wheel: 200kW at the front, and 500kW behind. Per wheel. Then you hold the brake, mash the throttle, feel the rear end rotate downward a few degrees as the motors pre-load the suspension, and when you release the brake ohsweetjesus.