“Especially the plenum temperature - the induction temperature for the engine - that goes up, and this has a big impact on the performance and reliability side.

“High temperatures can lead to knocking - when there is irregular timing of the combustion - so that means we have to turn the performance down to avoid it. We are always being very careful with high temperatures.

Knocking is bad for both performance and reliability because from a damage point of view it can have a big effect.”

30 degrees is the magic number when temperatures start to be monitored even more closely, but it’s not just when the mercury is rising that the power unit notices a difference.

“The best is 20 or 21 degrees,” Nakamura says. “When it is much lower temperatures we don’t have specific engine mapping because you don’t expect it. So from a performance point of view that means it’s not so good as well. If we had mapping for it then it would still increase the performance.