The concept of a road-legal car that can answer to the upper echelons of performance in motorsport is a familiar one, with some memorable race-bred machines permitted to wear licence plates and take to the road over the years, yet few have delivered in such uncompromising fashion as the Aston Martin Valkyrie.

Born of a partnership between Aston Martin and Red Bull Racing, it was the latter’s technical director and aerodynamics guru, Adrian Newey, who had a heavy hand in the Valkyrie’s conception.

The brief for the hypercar was to be as close as possible to an F1 car without being restricted to the track.

Aston Martin could be forgiven for hyperbole when it comes to the Valkyrie, but few could quibble with its assertion that it pushes the boundaries, describing its development as a “remarkable journey in engineering to make the impossible possible”.

Just how arduous that journey proved was apparent in the time taken for the car to reach production.

After the idea was initially conc...