It’s not every day that a supercar redefines the playing field both for itself and for its already tasty rivals. The McLaren 650S claims to do just that, so Matt Kimberley is in to Spain to have his senses pummelled.

Ignore the backdrop, my brain says. Focus on the car. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, though, when you’re sitting in the pit lane at the Ascari Race Resort, watching lurid McLarens thunder past at what sounds like a billion miles per hour.

It’s a big place, this. Rumour has it that to get around an obstructive Spanish planning committee who refused to allow a racing circuit on the site, Señor Ascari found a loophole in the law, built a hotel near the track and defined the 3.37-mile smoothly-surfaced loop on the plans as ‘the driveway’. If it’s true, it’s genius.

The car I’m supposed to be looking at is the same as the ones that are already pounding around the circuit. It’s the 650S; a development of the 12C but with enough new parts – and new talent – to warrant a new name. After its introduction, not one single order was placed for a 12C, so that model has been officially canned.

The 650 stands for horsepower. That’s more than even the absolute top drawer of hypercars had just a few years ago, but this is only McLaren’s mid-level model. The P1 is the ultra-exclusive (and sold out) kingpin and there’s a new, sub-650S car on the way, currently codenamed P13.

The core element of the 650S is one large and complex tub of carbon fibre, engineered to Formula 1 standards to be incredibly light, incredibly strong and more than a little sexy. Although the engineers tell me that last bit was just a fortunate by-product.

It means the car has body control worthy of a champion ice-skater. Its agility and capability are at least as monumental as anything its rivals, most notably Porsche and Ferrari, have ever built.

On the drive up from the coast to Ascari the 650S blew the twisting mountain road away with a devastating show of skill. Driving it fast – really fast – along a mountainside road so relentlessly twisty that British ‘elf’ and safety probably wouldn’t allow it to be built in the first place, you’d swear that motoring nirvana was right at the ends of your fingertips.

But fast-forward an hour or so and it’s time for some on-track action. Time for the 650S to show more reasons why it represents a watershed moment for sports cars. I accelerate up the pit lane exit, fitted with a helmet and a radio link to a McLaren test driver. Right, then. With the first few corners behind me it’s time to apply some speed. The two turbochargers get angry; whooshing, chuffing, whistling and whining into action, heralding an apocalypse of acceleration and a deep, sonorous bellow all the way up to 8,000rpm and beyond. An average diesel hatchback has given up the ghost by just 4,000rpm, and sounds utterly rubbish by comparison.

The way this thing builds speed is one thing, but the composure and accessibility that the 650S applies to the insane velocity is the real story. And that’s what has its German and Italian competition so worried. The stats speak for themselves: the most commonly part-exchanged car against a 650S has so far been the Porsche 911 Turbo. Until now, that was the benchmark.

The McLaren is that much more exotic, though, and it should be for the tens of thousands of pounds extra it costs over the Porsche. Nor does it lose anything in terms of refinement. The 650S will bimble around town all day long if you ask it to, and it’s comfortable with really impressive visibility. If it wasn’t so low you could almost mistake it for something everyday-ish.

It’s a gob-smacking overall package and it’s the new go-to recommendation for anyone wanting sports car perfection for about £200,000 (246,700). The 650S is, without a doubt, a legend in the making. The bar has been raised, the gloves have come off and it’s the rest of the supercar world’s turn to hit back. This is about to get really, really interesting.