ROMAN HOLIDAY

The unfortunate timing of the Ferrari Roma's arrival prevented us from fully testing its touring credentials. Mark Tisshaw puts that right with a Le Mans 24 Hours weekend

- Mark Tisshaw

The original premise was a simple one: a blast across France, from Le Mans back to London after the 24-hour race, in a Ferrari Roma to really test its cross-continent GT credentials under the cover of darkness.

The reality will be a little different. For starters, it stays light much later into the evening than I realised. Well past 10 pm, in fact, in midsummer, with the time difference and starting that far west making the return journey from Le Mans largely one in daylight. Ah.

No bother, though, as the keys to the Roma land in my palm a good 48 hours earlier than expected, so I have a whole weekend to enjoy it rather than just for the return leg – which will make for a far more rounded GT experience and a more memorable weekend, even though I already had lofty expectations to begin with.

The Roma was revealed in late 2019 so was tested by Autocar at the height of the pandemic, and this unfortunate timing means we haven’t had the chance to really get to know it.

Perhaps it has been a bit overshadowed, too, by some other headline-grabbing Ferraris revealed in recent times, including the 986bhp SF90 Stradale hybrid hypercar, and the consequential questions about what this would mean for the brand’s core mid-engined supercar. That, it turned out, became a hybrid, too. We’ve recently driven the petrol-electric V6-powered 296 GTB and immediately fallen in love with it.