| First Drive | Hethel, Norfolk | Lotus 2-Eleven |

It's impossible to exploit a modern car's dynamics to the full on the public road without fear of retribution from the long arm of the law or indeed your own moral conscious, hence the continuing success of trackday specials. Companies such as Radical, Caterham and Westfield do very well out of this market and so does Lotus, until now perhaps offering the most practical options from its highly usable Elise and Exige line-up. Many Lotus owners use their cars on a day-to-day basis, though there are understandably many more people that just don't get it and think that even the regular Elise is a bit too extreme. Thankfully for us, Nick Adams, Engineering Manager of Lotus Sport, disagrees.

The mad Lotus 2-Eleven is Nick's baby, having conceived the idea of a more extreme version of the Elise for trackday regulars a number of years ago. The 100th anniversary of the Shelsley Walsh 'Speed Hill Climb' in 2005 gave the company a reason to make the idea a reality and the Circuit Car was born to test public reaction. Needless to say, fans of the marque let Lotus know that there was room in the marketplace for such a car and so Adams was seconded to Lotus Sport to oversee its development.

Think of the 2-Eleven as more of an open-topped Exige rather than an Elise with no windscreen, as it takes its basis from the Exige S. Naturally, the epoxy bonded aluminium alloy structure from the Elise was used as a foundation, but the 2-Eleven features higher sides for greater torsional rigidity and also incorporates a six-point FIA approved rollover structure.

The high sides and roll cage are reasons to do without doors, but one of the main excuses is weight reduction. Such was the obsession with keeping the 2-Eleven's kerb weight down that we wondered whether Colin Chapman himself was hiding out in the skunk works of Lotus Sport... The new bodywork may retain some of the characteristics of the Elise, but it's all-new and features 'core-mat' technology. All-in, the external panels weigh just 40kg and unlike the previous Lotus track special, the 340R, the 2-Eleven has been designed with more practicality in terms of damage repair in mind, so all panels are easily bolted on and off.

Adams is particularly proud of the 2-Eleven's aerodynamics. To ensure the huge rear wing is fed with clean air, it was decided that the rear deck should be completely flat. In the Exige, the intercooler is mounted atop the engine, so this was moved into the space normally reserved for luggage behind the Toyota-sourced engine. Despite the longer inlet pipework, there is no discernable throttle lag and in fact, the new positioning and optimised air intakes in the sides of the 2-Eleven's bodywork increase the efficiency of the intercooler, releasing even more power, though Lotus has not measured this effect on a rolling road dynamometer.

Power is not something the 2-Eleven is short on. On a static dynamometer, the 1.8-litre engine is rated at 252bhp at 8,000rpm, with the maximum torque figure of 179lb.ft of torque produced at an equally heady 7,000rpm. On paper, those numbers suggest a car that needs to be redlined in every gear to extract the most from it, but that's not at all the case, as the supercharger endows the unit with massive flexibility. Allied with a low kerb weight (670kg in road trim), the reality is that the 2-Eleven is breathtakingly quick in pretty much any gear at almost any engine speed. To use the full breadth of the rev counter on the public road is an experience that takes working up to, but once acclimatised, it's very usable performance without feeling like the car needs to be thrashed.

Although Adams claims that the brief for the 2-Eleven was that it could be driven to the race circuit, then driven hard all day, then driven home again, we expected significant compromises for road use. We found that, in fact, the 2-Eleven is as good a road car as any of its stable mates, the low weight meaning that Lotus doesn't need to use stiff springs. It's no magic carpet ride either, but it doesn't argue with the road surface; instead it just moves with it. The torquey nature of the engine also helps, Obviously there are serious practicality issues, such as no luggage space other than your passenger's lap and you'll need to wear a helmet too if you want to avoid getting debris thrown up by other traffic in the face...

In truth, not even Lotus expects many owners to drive the 2-Eleven to the track and most markets will only have the option of a track-ready version, which comes with even larger front and rear spoilers than the car pictured here. Lotus kindly cleared the Hethel test track for us to try out the road version, though a quick installation lap indicated that a few large puddles and a slick surface may reduce the pace somewhat.

The thing is, this is Britain, and there really is a good chance that you'll turn up to your chosen trackday with dark clouds on the horizon and moisture in the air, so a car that is undrivable in these conditions would be pretty useless. In fact, the 2-Eleven is even more impressive in damp conditions, the semi-slick Yokohama A048s somehow finding traction and the communication through the steering wheel and your rear end so incisive that you counter any slide almost before it happens.

One of the targets for the 2-Eleven was to allow a wide range of drivers the opportunity to exploit and learn the car without being intimidated. To that end, Lotus Sport has fitted variable traction control. An aluminium dial allows the driver to vary the threshold at which the electronics will intervene and cut engine power. Unlike ESP systems fitted to many modern cars, this does not attempt to brake individual wheels, so the car control is still in the hands of the driver. Even in the damp conditions we experienced, it took a heavy right foot at an inappropriate time to provoke the intervention of the traction control. Similarly, I don't recall the anti-lock brakes coming into play once during our time with the car, the 2-Eleven making even better use of the Exige's strong cross-drilled and ventilated disc set-up.

Lotus Sport wanted to make sure that potential customers were not alienated by a racecar-like knife-edge handling balance and it has succeeded, though the 2-Eleven will also reward those willing to push the boundaries of the tyres' grip. In short, it's a trackday special for a range of talents. Of course, it's still going to be a niche model and the Launch Edition costs £41,095, which pits it up against some very serious cars indeed. Still, there do appear to be enough trackday enthusiasts to support such a model, as Lotus has already broken even on the project, which paves the way for further special editions in the future.