Daytona ’67

I’ve been driving the new Ferrari Daytona SP3, it’s latest ‘Icona’ car, of which 599 units will be made, each already having been sold for £1.7 million. But before I did, and conditional on Ferrari tossing me the keys, I signed a piece of paper promising not to tell anyone what it was like to drive until August 1st. So I’m afraid that will have to wait until then.

But in the meantime the name has given me the idea for a sequel to the rightly well-received, if in some parts surprisingly fictitious, ‘Le Mans ‘66’ movie. In this new film, it would be Ferrari’s turn to cross the Atlantic at the very next opportunity and duff up the Americans at their Blue Riband 24-hour race, locking out the podium as Ford had done at Le Mans in a triumph of Italian engineering brilliance over American brute force and displacement. I’d call it ‘Daytona ’67’. But you’re right. That would be way too cheesy. It would never get made. And I’d go away and have a better idea were it not for one small detail: that is precisely what happened.