Yes, I have driven it, for a couple of all-too-brief, exhilarating laps at Silverstone. So, too, did John Watson who, 30 years ago at this very track, not only was the first man to win a Grand Prix in a carbonfibre-chassis car but, after a massive accident at Monza later that year, was to soon appreciate the innovative material’s safety properties.

Silverstone was an appropriate location for McLaren Automotive to introduce a few more journalists to the car on every motoring enthusiast’s lips: the MP4-12C. As we have seen, in 1981, Northern Irishman Watson scored a brilliant home GP win here behind the wheel of an MP4-1 Formula One car, the ground-breaking John Barnard design with its all-carbonfibre chassis.

Plus, the exchange of technical information and engineers between the racing and road car divisions is such that what works for an F1 car at Silverstone is, wherever possible, used on the new mid-engined GT. After the Woking company’s innovative early 80s foray into the carbonfibre ‘unknown’ (originally produced for them in the USA by NASA Space Shuttle supplier Hercules), the material soon became standard in F1.

Hence the adoption from the start of the carbonfibre ‘MonoCell’ as the MP4-12C’s central chassis component. The immensely stiff, strong, light (just 75kg) hollow one-piece structure is produced by composite expert CarboTech in Austria. Like its F1 cousin, the new McLaren road car’s carbonfibre mat is unwoven ‘non-crimp’ (that is, ‘straight lines’ of fibre, held together with cross-stitching – the ‘weave’ effect you might see for effect in many road cars is not as strong). But, instead of the pre-impregnated racing method, it’s a ‘dry’ process before liquid resin is injected into the 35-ton steel tool.

Known as Resin Transfer Moulding (RTM), the ground-breaking process produces not only a strong and light structure, it’s also one built to extremely fine tolerances – just 0.5mm across the diagonal after 5-axis, CNC machining. John Barnard was alongside Watson at Silverstone this week, and explained how carbonfibre can be built up in some places and reduced in others. Likewise, the direction of weave can have its own effect on the all-important balance of weight, safety and stiffness. The first torsional test on the 1981 MP4-1’s carbon tub proved it to be 2.5 times as stiff as aluminium, albeit slightly heavy. The second was thinner in places (so lighter) yet still twice as stiff as metal.

McLaren’s standard-setting F1, launched in 1993, was the world’s first all-carbonfibre-chassis road car. The time it took to create the tub for these cars could probably be timed in 100s of hours. Now, with RTM technology, the cycle time of a MonoCell for the MP4-12C in the two-chassis tool is just two hours. And there are no bonded or welded joints, so the bodywork is purely for aerodynamic and packaging purposes.

Which means a convertible can easily be introduced (and is likely to be, sometime next year), as can all-new styling well inside the usual seven years or so life-cycle of ‘conventional', all-metal cars.

McLaren MP4-12C: First Drive

It’s all very clever. And safe, and key to the driving qualities of the MP4-12C...

... which are, on brief experience, pretty extraordinary. Chris Goodwin was my chauffeur for a couple of sighting laps of the short circuit set in the shadow of the new ‘Wing’ structure which will be ready for this year’s GP. A highly experienced racing driver and tester, he’s covered tens of thousands of miles in prototypes and pre-production (the ‘PP’ cars you see here) McLarens since 2006.

Driving at fast road pace, in automatic and then using the ‘rocker’ paddles, Goodwin talks me through the different levels of suspension, aerodynamic and gearbox configuration available at the twist, or press, of a button. I’ll leave the minutiae of these for the full road test, though, as today is just an exquisite taster of the 592bhp supercar.