diff --git a/ci/cirrus.sh b/ci/cirrus.sh
index 929c16d..23f7c6d 100755
--- a/ci/cirrus.sh
+++ b/ci/cirrus.sh
@@ -5,6 +5,15 @@ set -x
 
 export LC_ALL=C
 
+# Start persistent wineserver if necessary.
+# This speeds up jobs with many invocations of wine (e.g., ./configure with MSVC) tremendously.
+case "$WRAPPER_CMD" in
+    *wine*)
+        # This is apparently only reliable when we run a dummy command such as "hh.exe" afterwards.
+        wineserver -p && wine hh.exe
+        ;;
+esac
+
 env >> test_env.log
 
 $CC -v || true
@@ -64,6 +73,9 @@ then
     make precomp
 fi
 
+# Shutdown wineserver again
+wineserver -k || true
+
 # Check that no repo files have been modified by the build.
 # (This fails for example if the precomp files need to be updated in the repo.)
 git diff --exit-code