Here’s what it’s like to drive the Aventador S on the Sepang F1 circuit, where even fast cars feel slow…

SEPANG, MALAYSIA — If there’s one thing about driving at Sepang, it’s that the place has a habit of making everything feel slow. The long, wide straights seem to take forever to cross, and no matter how much power you have underfoot, every car just ends up feeling breathless and overworked. Well, maybe not every car.

The Aventador S isn’t your average supercar. It’s got as much power as some recent-spec Formula One cars, and that translates into acceleration that’s brutal and tireless. When you tromp on the loud pedal, that big V12 hits so hard that you can feel your insides start to churn a bit. In fact, just remembering how the Lambo monsters down the straights now is making my heart beat faster again. The experience is that visceral.

Our boy wishes he were here again. Not the seat on the right. The other one, obviously…

740 horsepower feels about as insane as it sounds, but here are some other numbers to really think about. 100km/h comes and goes in 2.9 seconds — impressive, but there are Porsches that can do that — but it’s what happens above that that really scrambles the noodles. The Aventador S can do 0 to 200km/h in a scarcely believable 8.8 seconds. 300km/h takes another 15.4 seconds, and if you keep it floored beyond that, it’ll apparently show you 350km/h.

READ MORE > Wait! Read our primer on how the Aventador S is a car for your ego, first…

You don’t need Sepang for that, of course. Indeed, there isn’t enough room even there for a top speed run. So it’s down to the mix of fast sweepers and tighter hairpins to suss out what the Lamborghini can do.

What it does is, shrug them all off. The Aventador might have the kind of acceleration to drain the colour from your face, but it is incredibly balanced and planted when it’s time to turn the wheel. The new all-wheel steering system seems to kill off understeer, and it strips the fuss away from tackling the demandingly tight Turn 9. That corner tends to put a strain on front tyres, but it doesn’t even bother the Lambo’s bespoke Pirellis. The rear tyres don’t seem to mind much when you boot it out of bends, either. The all-wheel drive system, newly recalibrated to account for the rear-axle steering, means you have what feels like limitless traction.

Then there’s the fiendishly fast Turns 5 and 6, which racing drivers love and lesser people dread. The Lambo flies through them with the kind of breezy surefootedness that props your confidence up in a major way.

This user-friendliness is, if anything, a bit weird. In Corsa mode, especially, the Aventador S is properly hard-edged, and the steering sharpens up enough to make you wield it with greater care. But it just never feels like it wants to spit you off the track.

If the Aventador has a weakness, it’s the gearbox. It’s still a single-clutch unit (to keep weight down, says Lambo), and there’s a gap in the upshifts as a result. There’s enough torque interruption to induce a waggle from the car when it changes up mid-corner, in fact.

At low speeds in Strada mode it’s dull and unresponsive, too, and I’m pretty sure the Lambo would be impossible to drive smoothly in town as a result.

In that sense, the car almost feels like the opposite of the Ferrari F12berlinetta, another 740hp machine. In city traffic, that car is suave, smooth and user-friendly, whereas on the track it’s liable to give you the sweats.

Come to think of it, the Aventador S is the opposite of most cars in that sense. Sepang tends to expose the weaknesses in cars, but the place serves to highlight the strengths of the Lamborghini.