Behind the wheel of Jaguar's I-Pace eTrophy race car

By throwing out the insides and fitting some new, lighter bodywork, around 300kg on each I-Pace was consigned to the skip. Putting in the cage and fire suppressant and so on puts around 75kg of that back in so, for a race car, the I-Pace is pretty heavy, at 1965kg, but still well over 200kg lighter than the road car.

With the car’s powertrain remaining the same, apart from an increased drivetrain cooling capacity by opening up the front grille and losing air-con for the occupant, the I-Pace race car should feel brisk, no? Actually, no.

It’s weird. You clamber in like you would into any modern racing saloon, seated low, strapped tight. Among the controls, the gear selector remains the same, but otherwise everything in here is bespoke. There are controls on the steering wheel to adjust the ABS, the power distribution (split 50:50 or 48:52 front to rear, with the latter providing better mid- corner rotation) and things that you know will remain unfathomable with such a brief acquaintance.

And then encouraged out onto Silverstone’s little Stowe circuit, the experience is accompanied by... nothing but acceleration that feels more glacial than it surely is.

I guess this is what Sellers means by sensory deprivation. Driving a race car – even a slow one – is generally accompanied by huge transmission whine, punctuated by revving engines and gearshifts.

An eTrophy I-Pace just accelerates as quickly as the road car, with 0-60mph in 4.5sec. But while that feels fast on the road because you’re frequently stepping off from standstill, pulling away from a corner on a race track where the eTrophy car is already capable of big lateral grip and carrying good speed, other things come to the fore: the braking, the turn-in, the little additional throttle steer allowed by pushing that extra 2% of power to the rear.

The steering is light, accurate but short on feel. Braking is terrific and backed, in the right circumstances, by switchable motor regeneration.

If the battery’s full, regen doesn’t work, and later in a race, the amount of power continuously coming in and out of the battery can overheat its capacity to take more in, so the brakes are uprated to stop the car well anyway. But eTrophy drivers have found in testing that they prefer the brake feel with it engaged.

There are, essentially, new things to learn with an electric race car. M-Sport is running the cars, at a cost of £450,000 a season per car. The technical regs are nailed for three seasons, and you can lease a car for £95,000 a year, or buy it for £200,000. Even electric race cars aren’t cheap.