Harro."

A sea of red-Nissan-jacketed engineers greets our international media group as we enter the presentation room. We’re overshadowed by a gigantic video-game-like display – complete with excessively un-Germanic, arcade-style binging and bonging as each graphic is overlaid or peeled away – as they dissect one of the most sophisticated and accomplished automotive inventions from Yokohama in the last decade. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Velly Japanese. Velly Glan Tulismo. Curiously, we’re not in Tokyo, and much as we might want to will the fantasy into reality, tonight we find only an empty seat at the New York Bar atop the city’s Park Hyatt hotel, instead of a sultry, smoking, Suntory-sipping Scarlett Johansson (could there conceivably ever be any more convincing mascot for lung cancer?).

The substitute’s not bad, though. Scratch that – today, ‘not bad’ is a woeful understatement. If you are able to finally wipe the smears of sinning with Scarlett from your memory banks, you’ll have the mental capacity to appreciate that Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium ranks as one of the greatest racetracks in the world, if not the greatest. Seven kilometers of blinding crests and rib-cage-crushing drops, two sound-barrier-smashing straights. A painting you can race on. And one (or two) of the most awe-inspiring corners in the world: the uphill, left-right-left Eau Rouge-Raidillon complex. Formula One cars are designed to be able to take it flat-out – can the GT-R do the same?

In less than thirty minutes, we’ll be let loose on the same divine tarmac that has played theatre to angelic performances from every motorsport legend there is – and taken 48 lives – since opening in 1922. Spa isn’t a racetrack; it’s an altar.