We find some slightly smoother tarmac and the GTR starts to flow. In the F1 GTR you need to use cans and an intercom.’ I agree (with a nod, it’s easier) and chuckle that his frame of reference for what’s ‘loud’ is a car that competed at Le Mans. Shouting louder he repeats: ‘It’s not too loud. Andy’s riding with me for these early miles and he shouts something with a smile. It’s not tuneful, it’s not beautiful, but it is everywhere. On a steady throttle the air pressure builds and builds with an intense hissing sound that grows ever more furious. The noise is quite extraordinary, an ever-changing series of chuffs, wheezes, sneezes and bone-jangling baritone roars. It feels instantly and fabulously illegal. There’s not much steering lock to play with but I manage to manoeuvre the GTR cleanly out onto a mini roundabout, thankful for the front lifting system that helps negotiate a steep angle of attack. The paddle travel is perhaps longer than you’d expect but feels wonderfully mechanical in operation. The small but thick paddles are mounted on a central rocker just like in McLaren’s road cars. Fortunately, the width of the handles and the apertures that you wrap your fingers into feel utterly natural despite the alien shape. Driving gloves are never cool but this material is clearly designed for use with racing gloves, its gloopy texture feeling odd against bare skin. It’s actually tacky to the touch, almost like it’s coated in Blu-Tack. Modelled on the 2008 championship-winning MP4-23 F1 car’s, the chunky rectangular carbonfibre controller is a thing of real beauty and an extraordinary centrepiece to the driving environment. It’s not raw and ugly like, say, an F40, but there’s an economy about the architecture and it looks like a place of business. The dash is simple, the elegant shapes formed from a cool satin-finish carbonfibre and sparingly trimmed in Alcantara. Pull the driver’s door up and forward and the interior seems to float in a massive arc of polished carbon weave. The result feels as beautifully flawless as you’d expect given the price of the GTR and the conversion. Andy wanted to keep the race-car feel but add sections of Alcantara and replace functional but slightly unrefined edges and seams with perfectly executed finishes. Andy Bruce’s car went back to the tub for the transformation and a huge amount of time was spent refining the interior trim. However, Lanzante go beyond the minimum requirements and work on the minutiae, too. Others are for practical purposes, for example the increase in ride height and the retuned suspension rates. Many of the changes are dictated by simple legislation: catalytic converters for the exhausts, a handbrake, changes to the headlights, road-legal wheels and tyres. Lanzante’s road conversion for the P1 GTR is highly detailed, meticulously developed and infinitely adaptable to the owner’s taste. Chassis 044 and road conversion 014, his GTR wears a distinctive Team Lark livery, which is a tribute to the Team Lark McLaren F1 GTR that contested the All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship in 1996. This car belongs to Andy Bruce, a man with impeccable taste in cars and a collection to make you jump for joy and then weep when you realise that you’ll never match it. It just shouldn’t.’ He’s right, of course. ‘I’ve never felt anything like that,’ he says. ‘Oh my god… Oh my GOD… JETHRO!’ Then the familiar cackling as I flick into fourth and hit the brakes. Gus – a veteran of Veyrons and the like – is grabbing at fresh air, trying to restore his own grip on reality. At about 4500rpm the rear tyres light up for maybe a second before the traction control tempers the delivery just enough to restore traction. No lag, the power comes in hard and without hesitation. Photographer Gus Gregory is checking the interior driving shots he’s just finished on the back of his Canon, but he hasn’t yet experienced the P1 GTR. Enough to pin the accelerator and hold it there all the way to the limiter in third.
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