Delivering a simple line to camera in anything with a healthy amount of horsepower, under full acceleration, is an acquired skill… in the Jesko it’s pretty much impossible. It’s not the ferocity of the g-force squeezing me against my seat like a giant potato masher that’s the problem, I can cope with that, it’s the ninja reflexes required to click the upshift paddle before colliding with the rev limiter that’s proving tricky. So we keep going, run after run, until my brain, eyes, ears and right hand are sufficiently recalibrated, a perfect launch is in the bag and my adrenal glands dangle like shrivelled walnuts off my bruised kidneys.

Photography: Mark Fagelson

In my defence, there are some typically revolutionary pieces of technology here that are conspiring against me. The first is a gearbox, a new nine-speed “Light Speed Transmission” that blows raspberries in the general direction of a twin-clutcher. Essentially you have two sets of three gears that compound to create nine possible ratios – like a bike derailleur system – with the first three extremely closely stacked (hence me repeatedly headbutting the rev limiter), the next three a bit more spaced out, and the final three further apart still. It features six individual clutches for the forward gears and a seventh for reverse, so all gears are constantly engaged and ready. And the benefits are many. Not only are shifts, quite literally, bang on, you can also jump from one gear to any of…