I shouldn’t say too much about the specifics of the track test I was doing recently, because we haven’t written the story yet (we’ve found a generic enough picture for this piece to disguise it), but the short of it is that it involved one fast car and another that happened to be one of the quickest, most urgently responsive cars I’ve ever driven.
Usually on track tests of multiple vehicles like this, testers like to start the day driving a slower car, to get a feel for the conditions, handling and circuit. Getting one’s eye in, so to speak. Like pitching a few chips down the driving range before getting one of the big sticks out of one’s golf bag, I imagine.
For logistical reasons, I couldn’t do that and had to start with the equivalent of using the big driver to try to whack a ball 300 yards, or face a Curtly Ambrose bouncer, or meet an end-of-level baddie for my first in-game scrap. Pick your own analogy, really, but first thing I had to drive an impossibly quick car around a very fast circuit that I don’t know well.
It’s not a frightening thing to do, because the throttle is always a lever not a switch and there’s no obligation to use all of the available performance, but the people who made this car were looking on and there’s an expectation that you will at least have a go.
Fair to say I didn’t exactly set the world alight during my first attempt, but it still pretty well frazzled me. When I came back to the pit lane, the car’s keeper gave me a questioning thumbs-up with raised eyebrow, to make sure I and the car were okay. With my helmet off and him suitably reassured, another industry friend, who I know is prone to very dry humour, asked if I would like a drink. As I vaguely explained that I was fine, thanks, having missed his witty intonation entirely, he said he had meant “of gin”.
I had a cup of tea and tried again, because I’m told that during a few minutes of downtime, one’s mind can subconsciously process what sensory overload it has just experienced and will prepare itself for the next one. Which is what happened.
It was perhaps the most urgent car I’ve ever tried that wears numberplates, and I enjoyed it very much. I still didn’t extract every bit of performance out of it, but I ran to the rev limiter often, used full throttle far more comfortably often and got a decent feel for its chassis balance.
There’s a school of thought, and it’s one with which I broadly agree, that you will enjoy driving a car more if it matches your own level of performance, in the same way that you would get a better game of sport against someone who is about as good as you rather than, say, playing Shaun Murphy at snooker.
Modern fast cars are much more approachable than they used to be, which makes them easier to enjoy, but still, I certainly think I’ve been closer to extracting the full performance of something like a Citroën C1 race car than I have any big-winged single-seater I’ve tried and, as a result, found racing it more enjoyable in the moment.
