Track Day Experience with the Maserati MC20

Despite this, I feel a bit lost at times. Corner 11, the penultimate one, is long, sweeping and so wide.

Four laps sail by and it’s time for some feedback. “There are probably more good points than I was expecting,” says Vann. Damning with faint praise there, but I’ll let him continue.

“Your steering technique was absolutely fine,” he says. “But you need to use a bit more of the width of the track, which will help smoothen out that throttle.”

I couldn’t agree with him more. I did feel lost and I did feel unsmooth. On the drive to Bedford, the MC20 felt like it delivered its power pretty broadly. But on track, with the adrenaline racing through me and the gearchanges coming quickly, I’ve found it all becomes a bit peaky.

Out for round two. Vann’s pep talk has given me a real spring in my step and, with a bit more confidence in me now, I feel much more at home using the track’s full width and I use the accelerator and brakes more gradually and less like an on/off switch.

We come in for a bit of lunch. Vann notes that I have relatively good car control. I look up at social media executive Jonathan Bryce and snapper Jack Harrison, who are with me today. Both pretend they didn’t hear it, but they did.

I finish up some couscous and discover that it is now raining heavily. Damn. We hang around for a while and it calms down. Then we head outside. Vann says a greasy track can be even trickier than a wet one.

He explains the benefit of shifting up early to quell the 538lb ft of turbocharged torque and we take to the track.

His words fail to make much of an impression on my prefrontal cortex as I nail it in second gear and ceremoniously feel the back end snap. I catch it, though having dialled the drive mode back to Sport means the DSC will have helped.

Eventually, it’s time for the final debrief. “Where I thought that you had made the most improvement was in braking, in terms of your initial hit on the brakes – getting the car slowed down,” says Vann.