Ferrari 575M

Other mooted benefits include better performance in wet weather and a 10kg per corner drop in unsprung weight. They may look dirty compared with conventional rotors, and they lack the glorious sparkle of a freshly honed iron disc, but the visual impact of filling the wheel centres to absolute bursting point is hard to deny. Those five-spoke split rims are new, too.

At 19 inches they are one size up from the standard issue, and they are wrapped in bespoke and very sticky Pirelli P Zero Corsa rubber – 255/35 at the sharp end and 305/30 out back. Visually, though, that’s pretty much your lot.

New and lighter exhaust silencers unleash a few more dB – if no more power – from what has always been a surprisingly ordinary-sounding engine; careful attention to software mapping has optimised the shift pattern of the optional F1 transmission.

With the console-mounted Sport button selected, shifts are now somewhere between those of a Stradale and a Scaglietti. Otherwise it’s the same 65-degree V12 delivering 508bhp at 7250 and 434lb ft of churn at 5250rpm from 5748cc.

Adequate then, you’d think, even with the same 1730kg of metal to hulk around as the standard car.Ferrari’s figures put the F1 version slightly ahead in a straight line, but the difference (4.2sec to 62mph compared with 4.25sec for the stick car) is so small as to be inconsequential.

Certainly it’s not shy on the pony count – but while it sounds satisfyingly meatier at idle, issuing a deeper, edgier tone than standard, and just manages to stay the right side of boomy on the overrun, with our ears ringing with the shrill metallic tune of the various 360s floating around Modena, my neck coiffurry remained resolutely unmoved.

It’s quality not quantity that’s needed, an aural signal that the redline is approaching, because this engine loves to rev, and a keen eye is needed if the needle on the large rev counter in the centre isn’t to keep butting up against the 7600rpm limiter.

This is my first crack at Fiorano, and hopefully not my last, but it doesn’t take long to drop into a rhythm. The new springs (one third stiffer than standard up front, 15 per cent at the rear), revised dampers and the rear anti-roll bar (a massive 75 per cent stiffer) keep the 575’s roll to an absolute minimum, particularly through the circuit’s transitions. And with those bespoke Pirellis taking on the consistency of fly paper in the 28degC heat, it’s entirely possible to drive up to and over the limit without ever feeling overstretched.

According to official data, the tweaks are worth 1.5sec over a standard car, but while track prowess was undoubtedly firmly in the mind of the engineers behind the project, we need to escape the glassy surface if we’re to make sure things won’t fall apart back in Britain.

Leaving Fiorano, though, I’m troubled. First by a kamikaze pensioner in a Yaris who pulls right across our path a handful of yards from the track – forcing me and a car worth more than my flat into a potential head-on collision with a Volvo coming the other way. Second, by the rather unyielding ride on my first taste of lumpen asphalt. Truth be told it’s far from unbearable, and before long I’m too busy concentrating on perfecting my low-speed gearshifts to pay it much mind.

Like the similar system fitted to the Maserati Coupé, or even the humble Smart, the 575’s F1 transmission requires learning and commitment but can be rewarding, if ultimately not as satisfying as a proper clack-clack manual. Waiting for the oil to warm in the morning, perfecting that roll onto a blipped throttle on the way down the ’box or just savouring that interaction of tried-and-trusted mechanicals; all these are fundamental to the Ferrari experience in my book, but it seems those of you with the funds to buy these cars disagree.

Eighty per cent of UK 575s are F1-equipped; for the Scaglietti, the figure is nearer 90 per cent and rising. In a quiet moment, one very senior engineer suggests he’d drop the manual option tomorrow if only the marketing department would allow it.

The chrome stick may still have a couple of years left, but future Ferraris will ditch conventional cast-iron brakes for carbon-ceramics, and judging by our experience with this car, they’re unlikely to be missed. Forget what you heard about poor progression and pedal feel on other carbon-ceramic applications: here they’re strong and full of feel right to the point where the anti-lock intervenes.

There’s better news to come, though, because as we pick up the pace climbing higher into the hills, the initially stiff-legged suspension settles, and bar the odd mid-corner bump that can set the tail skipping, it takes on a far more compliant air.