Problem child

You’re perched on the pit wall at Spa-Francorchamps, neck craned to the left, peering down at the famed Bus Stop chicane. The faintest chirp of tyre squeal can be heard for a moment, before the unsilenced howl of a 2.9-litre V8 intervenes. As the revs rise, so does your anticipation – catching a glimpse of any F40 is momentous, let alone its deranged cousin, the F40 LM.

But today’s offering is rarer still. A bastardised one-off that officially doesn’t exist and whose fate remains a mystery. That baritone bark draws ever closer, the revs rising and falling with each heel and toe’d downshift anticipating the final corner. The famed wedge comes into view and as it does, your heart and jaw drop in perfect unison. It’s been decapitated. There’s no roof, those wheels are unrecognisable and the whole car appears to be yellow.

Blasphemous, bizarre, call it what you will, but just such a contraption once saw the light of day. Welcome everyone to the Ferrari F40 LM Barchetta. And just before we get into the whats and whys, a brief word about the who.