THIS BULL GIVES YOU WINGS

As a tragic marketing video for this car once said, "dust is gold, dirt is for the bold." All we know is, Lambo saved the best V10 Huracán variant for last

I'd roughly equate it to flying in your dreams. Not the whole deeper meaning, running away from your problems bit - or whatever psychologists with large foreheads claim they mean - I'm talking about the feeling when your toe leaves the ground and you take to the air. Personally, I tend to adopt a swimming stroke approach to gain altitude - front crawl for speed, breaststroke for control - before gliding about in weightless euphoria. Frictionless, total freedom, zero sense of danger, no thinking just doing.

Admittedly, the process of driving the new Huracán Sterrato on dirt is a fair bit noisier and more violent than floating about in the clouds sucking my thumb, but it's similarly stress free. Normally, on an asphalt track, I'm constantly grading myself. Did I hit the correct line? Did I nail my braking point? Did I feed the throttle in just so? Here, that evaporates leaving infinite options at all times. Turn in whenever you fancy, play with the throttle, enjoy some angles then soar out the other side with all four fully lit, body in perfect control, mind serene and without a stopwatch in sight. It's effortless, flattering and like the odd Rix Airways flight, I never want it to end.

I realise this sounds overblown and ridiculous, but it's the truth. It's aggressive driving without the spikes and there's purity to the experience because the goal isn't precision, or measured performance... it's fun. And that, in a nutshell, is why the Sterrato (and its German cousin the Porsche 911 Dakar) exist. Should we be surprised that two off-road supercars have arrived pretty much on top of each other? Not really. Manufacturers are aware they can't keep fuelling excitement levels by adding more power and speed, both of which breeched sensible levels a long time ago, so they need to find new avenues to amusement.