I would say 469bhp is conservative. I like ‘low-balling’ with GT3s – we could say 500bhp and that would be perfectly homologatable, but I’d rather say 469bhp and have the GT3 beat all the 550bhp cars. This is more Porsche.'

And coming from the other side we are under pressure from the competition, so I won’t sacrifice any performance just because someone wants to shift with a manual.

On when the manual gearbox was ruled out…

'We ruled out the manual gearbox in back to-back comparisons last summer. On every shift with the PDK is more emotional, because for the first time when you shift at 9000rpm there’s a bham! in the exhaust, and this gives you goosebumps. It blips the throttle on the downshifts, and on a road you don’t know you can go very fast with both hands on the wheel. And on a race track the PDK gains three-quarters of a car length with every shift, so after a long straight you’re ahead of the other car and can turn-in in front of him. It just works.

if you’ve got a manual and a PDK you’ve got to have different set-ups for the suspension, the aero, the tyres, everything. We are a small team and can only concentrate on one car.'

We can change the angle of the rear wheels by 1.5 degrees, which doesn’t sound like much but the effect is tremendous. I couldn’t believe how much better the agility of the car and the turn-in capability are with the system. I did a back-to-back test, in one car with the system able to be turned off by a switch, and couldn’t believe the difference. And on track, the tyres last longer, so you are more consistent.