Around the well laid out circuit, which featured corners of every severity and camber, the 355 was beautifully balanced with the Bridgestone S-01s allowing almost no understeer followed by momentum oversteer which, thanks to the newly rediscovered throttle response and torque, could be developed into power oversteer at will. The chassis continually delights with its nimbleness and adjustability and the subtle oversteer actually aids turn-in without being scary or inhibiting.

The day was drawing to a close when a warning light flashed on the dash. My heart sank, although at least it was the battery / alternator light and not one of the 'your engine has blown up' warnings. A call to Carl Verdi diagnosed either a broken alternator belt or more likely a broken wire coming out of the alternator. Luckily Kwik-Fit had a van there to supply and change customers' tyres and their chap used his air jacks to lift the rear of the car. BookaTrack's resident engineer, Rich, struggled underneath and, following advice from Carl on the phone, removed a section of the undertray and identified the fault was, as suspected, a broken wire. A few minutes later and I was able to drive back down the A12 without fear of the electrical system shutting down.

Such service from Carl and his boys justifies the level of expenditure the Ferrari entails and I had no qualms paying them the additional ΂£2800 needed to fully settle last month's work (on top of the ΂£3972 already paid).

Quality and experience costs, and whilst no-one can prevent a car breaking down, at least Carl can correctly diagnose problems when they do occur. In this imperfect world, that is as much as one can wish for...