We had to ask. Even though we could probably have written out the answer for ourselves. When Dale explored the whole

'sub seven' issue

shortly before Porsche confirmed it'd done just that

in the 918 Spyder

he had a McLaren bod he'd met out there as saying, "Without a sub-seven lap time, we probably won't even mention we were at the Nurburgring."

Well, the rumour mill said on the first attempt the P1 went 7min 4sec and now it's saying on a return visit it's done 6min 47sec. Off the back of confirming the P1's performance stats you'd have thought a lap time would've rounded things off nicely, not to mention throwing a gauntlet down to LaFerrari.

4C fastest in ... the class it claims as its own

But when we asked McLaren we were told, perhaps unsurprisingly, "It is all just purely speculation. There is no secret that a car is over in Germany at the moment with a team of development engineers, who are working on calibrations and final tuning, but no lap times of any circuits have been set."

Apart from the '10 seconds faster than anyone' around the Top Gear test track, claimed by one Ron Dennis, that is.