Aston Martin DB11 ride & handling

Fairly soft springing makes for supple bump absorption at most prevailing speeds, but somehow those Bilsteins prevent the associated limp body control and lazy directional response that you might be expecting from even beginning to take root in the dynamic mix.

And so the DB11 corners keenly and flat. Its body breathes with an undulating surface, not pitching or heaving far enough to make the car deflect. The frequency of its movements is gentle and low, and
the suspension seldom needs more than one matching stroke of compression and rebound to return the car to a settled equilibrium.

Cornering balance – another way in which a heavy engine has got the better of many a big GT over the years – is also spot on.

The steering is a little lighter than we’d prefer, and likewise not as rich on feedback, but it’s very good for a first crack with electromechanical technology.

Cabin isolation in the car is less exemplary. An aluminium underbody presents any car maker with a challenge in snuffing out noise and vibration because the raw material is inherently conductive of both – and so it proves here.

The DB11 cockpit isn’t noisy but is far from luxuriously hushed. Bigger door mirrors, mandated by new safety regulations, contribute to a level of wind noise that’s inoffensive but not entirely becoming of a super-luxury GT car.

The DB11’s grip, speed, balance and composure around a circuit are all exemplary for what is a two-tonne car with testers aboard.

Its benchmark lap time was almost as close to that of the quicker Porsche 911 Turbo S we figured in 2013 as it was to the slower Bentley Continental GT3-R tested last year.

So good is the car’s control of its mass that you can drive it much harder than you’d think possible, and without having to manage the effects you’d imagine its weight and pragmatic suspension tune would present.

It turns in keenly even at very high speeds. The absence of roll does make you unsure of the remaining grip level, which the steering could also better communicate in extremis, but we never reached the point at which the front wheels began to run out of directional authority.