Porsche-918-Chris-Harris

The LaF really does handle superbly – I think it has the most straightforward handling of the three – it really does feel like a very, very fast 458, but it can’t counter the P1’s transformers-style Track mode which sees it drop to floor-height and sprout the most stupendous rear-wing. I suspect when Ferrari saw that, a collective Doh! echoed around Maranello. For true high speed cornering potential, the P1 has to hold a clear advantage.

But which one would you have?

That was the original point – and the beautiful simplicity of that question is that you can allow yourself to be completely swayed by the most puerile, basic attributes.

Want the best looking? To my eyes, take the Porsche. The 918 somehow emerged from an awkward gestation as the most beautiful Stuttgart product since the 904 GTS. It is stunning. The LaF grows on me by the day though – in the flesh it has vast presence, and you think it can’t be bettered until you peer-in though the semi-naked rear of the P1 and wonder if such a machine can be classified as a ‘motor car’. It seems like an alien device.

Porsche-918-Chris-Harris

And I think that is something I’ve come to realise over the past year – two of these cars feel like logical progressions of a model line-up; halo vehicles that have a strong connection to a well-understood brand DNA. Those are the Porsche and the Ferrari. But ever since I first saw it in the flesh, the P1 has always felt like it was dropped from another planet altogether. I love its size and its ferocity and its brilliant execution of the torque-fill concept that allows a vast, heavily turbocharged motor to use electricity to feel so immediate.

THE VERDICT: LAFERRARI VS. PORSCHE 918 VS. MCLAREN P1

So if I had the funds, based on what I know and what I like, I’d have a P1. Not necessarily the best, nor perhaps the fastest – but the closest to what I’d want in a hypercar.

And when I do drive all three together, which I will sometime soon, I fully expect to look-back at these words and laugh at how badly I called it.