ITALIAN STALLION

The Daytona SP3 is Maranello's greatest hits distilled into one rousing, rose-tinted package. This is Ferrari unplugged...

- JACK RIX

To lift or not to lift, that is the pressing question as I exit La Source hairpin and hug the pit wall like a comfort blanket. Pros: the conditions (warm and dry), the car (a highly sophisticated V12 mid-engine Ferrari) and the race situation (I have the track to myself). Cons: circuit knowledge (I'm a Spa newbie, never driven Eau Rouge let alone taken it flat) and driver talent (I'm Jacky Rix, not Jacky Ickx).

Pros have it. I steel myself, shuffling an inch lower in the seat - simultaneously dropping the center of gravity and hiding behind the binnacle. Downhill straight crashes into a towering incline, left-right-left, it takes every ounce of concentration to ignore my rational mind and prevent my right foot from retreating. A bead of sweat sidesteps my eyebrows and stings the corner of my eye, the front wheels track straight and true through Raidillon, the engine flexes its diaphragm on top of the hill and bellows a 12-gun salute to the memory of the endurance racers it keeps alive... and we're safely onto the Kemmel straight, just as a perfect finger of light reaches through the clouds to bless the SP3's passage.

Aaaand... all that occurred at 44mph. Shame. Ferrari's call not mine: "Due to the value of the car and the fact that it's a limited edition model, the maximum speed allowed on the circuit is 70kph." Brutal, I know. The deal was this: we got four hours to drive the Daytona SP3 with vigour on the roads around the Spa Francorchamps circuit, then two hours on one of the world's fastest racetracks, in one of the world's most exciting cars... at congested M25 speeds. Enough for a carefully curated photo call to fill in the backstory of this car, not remotely enough to find the limits in a one-of-599, 828bhp psychopath worth £2m. Fear not, we learned about the fire in the SP3's belly on the road earlier and we'll get to that, but first a short history lesson.