Chances are that if you’re inflicted with the great petrolhead disease you have probably been gifted a supercar experience day, you know where you get to drive some clapped-out exotic in 4th gear at 60mph around an airfield. They are disappointingly naff but you still have to grin and pretend it’s the best experience of your life. The Porsche Experience is not that, it’s petrolhead nirvana.

The enjoyment starts with buying the experience, you can pick pretty much any car in the current Porsche line-up as well as some more specialist experiences in some of the previous generations including cars like the 997 4.0 RS and 911R. I had agonised over what car to choose but I settled on a 911 Carrera T, a sweet spot in the 911 range that wouldn’t corrupt me like a Turbo S or a GT3 would. The standard 90-minute course was £325 with a meal included, plus the option to add an additional guest’s meal at checkout. I should note that this experience was purchased with my own money and Porsche did not pay for this.

Arriving on the day you are greeted by an interactive map of the tracks on offer, an airfield this ain't! It’s a combination of two road-style handling circuits, “the straights” acceleration and braking course, two small low friction tracks on the infield, the “ice hill” and the “kick plate” which offer an extremely low grip surface to simulate snow and ice. There is also an offroad section for the SUVS but for obvious reasons, I wouldn’t be exploring that in a 911.

After sign on and some time spent drooling over the cars inside the centre it was time for a coffee which of course had “911” written in chocolate on the top. Next up was a laid back briefing where an instructor lets you know how the day will run, the various do’s and don’ts and other useful information. Your guests don’t have to sit through any of this, instead they get to sit in the facility and enjoy refreshments as well as views over the centre and Silverstone circuit itself.

My instructor collected me and showed me to my car for the day, a lovely Carrera T with the PDK box. The car was immaculately clean, full of fuel and was wearing a nice fresh set of tyres, Porsche clearly pay attention to the cars condition and it shows. After a brief chat and getting yourself seated in the car correctly you then head out onto the two handling circuits to get used to the car and learn where everything is. Initial impressions are that this facility really has it all and is laid out to maximise both you and the car. So far all I can tell you about the T is that the auto box shifts nicely and the 18 way seats are very comfortable.

The first exercise is a figure of 8, here my instructor asked me to build up speed and get comfortable with how the car stops and goes. They use this to assess your throttle, brake and steering control and to understand how confident you are. After a few runs my instructor was happy with my abilities and directed us onto the small handling circuit. In this exercise I couldn’t really get much of a feel for the T short of telling you that it stops and goes with ease and the auto box responds snappily when you plant the throttle.

I was asked to do a couple of laps at a slower pace then to carry on and drive at a speed I was happy with whilst he assessed my lines. This was my first chance to unleash the T and see what it was all about, my first impression was just how capable and communicative it was, within a couple of laps I was driving at eight tenths and feeling good thanks to the rear end traction inspiring confidence and the chassis goading me to drive harder. My instructor began to ask a few questions about driving fast and assessing how I go about learning a circuit, this was all very encouraging and he began to advise on two corners where if I changed my line I could lap even faster. After 10 more minutes of fast laps with a gradually increased pace the instructor moved us on to the straights for some acceleration and braking tests.

This exercise is used by the instructor to see how good you are at threshold braking and manging traction but also to demonstrate the cars behaviour in the various modes. This section of the day felt seriously abusive, we ran through 10 or so launch control starts followed by a big stop each time. By the final launch we had all systems off and were leaving some lovely elevens and a cloud of smoke as the T fought for traction. Despite being the entry level engine the 3.0 was strong with great low down grunt and power that only trailed off at the very top of the rev range, thanks to the T’s reduced sound deadening