My First...Supercar

Merry Christmas, Car Throttle fans!

No, the heat responsible for the hosepipe ban hasn't gone to my head. Yesterday was, at long last, the realisation of a Christmas present promise: a supercar driving experience followed by a 'wild ride' in a lightweight track car. For any total novices of high-performance machinery, here's a few words on how to come to terms with a bona fide Ferrari supercar in three laps.

Yes, that's right, three laps. Anyone expecting to be left alone with the keys and hammer around like Jezza on a Sunday night with the back tyres lit up needs to take a reality check and readjust expectations. This isn't a performance test, it's an 'experience', allowing the occupant to actually nail the throttle of a supercar down a runway, click through its paddleshift-operated gears and hear the blare of an exotic engine churning away behind them.

I chose the Ferrari 360, since it presented the opportunity to drive something most alien to what I've pedalled before. Rear-wheel drive, mid-engined, more than 4 cylinders, semi-auto transmission, even two seats were all firsts for me. From three laps I can't give you the definitive exploration and verdict on the car's dynamics, but I can share first impressions of a 400bhp Prancing Horse which holds the dubious record of making the most appearances on WreckedExotics.com. The 360 has always had a reputation as, to quote Sir Jeremy of Clarkson, a 'tricky little so-and-so', but chances to pin one through third gear don't present themselves every day, so in for a penny...

The first aspect made obvious was the nature of the drilled aluminium throttle pedal being so damned difficult to modulate. Everyone laments the loss of the open-gated Ferrari manual, but with calibration as unprogressive as this, I was glad my 'F1 Shift' car removed the potentially embarrassing threat of stalling. The top of the travel was a bit sticky and didn't provoke so much as a murmur from the V8, so I gave it a harder prod and the rev counter zipped around to 4500rpm. That's a highly-strung engine for you.

In all the excitement and confusion of jumping straight into the car, adjusting the seat, trying to ignore the giant crack through the windscreen, and getting off the line, I'd forgotten that it's still a quick car, way faster than anything I've ever driven before. Back in the day the 360 would hit 60mph in 4.6 seconds and roll out to 186mph. Its modern grandchild, the 458 would monster those numbers, but this is still Audi R8 territory, so the 360 demands respect even as a junior league supercar. All of which I realised as I straightened the car out of the chicane and heard the instructor shout over the row behind us to pin the throttle open.

I didn't look at the speed. I didn't check the speedometer once during my time in the car, instead focusing on the centrally-mounted rev counter, which climbed quickly to 4500rpm and then positivly lunged towards the stratospheric 8500rpm redline. The sense of the engine's strength growing as it spun towards its peak power at 8000rpm was palpable, and although I was consistently instructed to flick the cool metal change-up paddle on the right of the steering column at 6k, I (completely accidentally, you understand) strayed over that barrier several times. The pace was eye-opening, but through 2nd and 3rd gear it's the noise assaulting the nape of your neck which dominates the experience. Proper, blood-and-guts flat plane crank V8 stuff, and without a doubt my abiding memory of the 360.

Juan Pablo Montoya once referred to his own 360 as 'an understeering pig', and with the traction control firmly on, wearing extremely worn tyres, on a concrete slabbed disused runway, I can sort of see what he's on about, though I was left rather more enamoured with Maranello's hard work than Juan. Around the left-right chicane which opened out onto the back straight (think Top Gear's Hammerhead corner) the nose of the Fandango would push wide as its tired Pirellis skipped across the lumpy surface, but with a confidence lift to bring the front back into line, the feel through the steering was truly remarkable. The first car I've ever steered whose tyres weren't simulatenously pulling the car along transmitted feedback of such depth and rich texture it really did, to use an old cliché, remind me of a go-kart. The bucking of the wheel in your hands, and its stream of information about how hard the tyres were being worked isn't just a motoring hack's myth that exists in glossy mags: it is out there. And it's in the helm of a Ferrari 360.

I'm surprised how much can be gleaned from a few short laps in a well-worn supercar. I'd love to drive one for longer, and on the road, and without the beady eye of an instructor burning into the side of my head, judging my inputs and calling time on the fun all too soon. But as a first induction into the rareified world of Italian exotica, this was a blinding day out in the British spring sunshine.

Of course, I still had my 'wild ride' to look forward to, the exact wildness of said ride depending on the score assigned to you by the supercar instructor. With a respectable if unremarkable 34/40 to my name, it's fair to say the professional nutter strapped into the KTM X-Bow next to me went for the full 'lamb phall' approach, over the chicken korma, if that's not too tenuous a metaphor. I'll let the video below do most of the talking, but as adrenaline-filled sixty seconds go, this is up there with the best of them. The hilarious voiceover is provided by my observing parents...

Around that top turn, just before the third gear powerslide, you see my Stig wannabe friend outbrake a Nissan GT-R. I couldn't make out the figures on the digital display, but suffice to say the force of the Brembos in that turbo carbon missile lifted me clean out of my seat and pushed my feet so hard into the bare footwell I was momentarily stood up, horizontally. Talk about standing on the brakes...

I've never much cared for the X-Bow before; its carbon tub, pushrod suspended, S3-powered build has excellent attention to detail but it seems an awfully complicated way around a delightfully simply recipe for lightweight track thrills, and would always come second to an Atom if I were totting up my Ten Car Garage (we've all got one.) It's amazing how a demonstration of its on-the-limit abilities can broaden the KTM's appeal to even the most hardcore cynics. however.

If you fancy grabbing some of this short-lived high octance action for yourself, check out Everyman Racing here and take your pick of rally, off roading, or supercars. The selection on offer during my day included 360s, Gallardo Spyders, 1 of 4 Gallardo Balboni editions in the UK, a Porsche 996 Turbo, Aston Martin DB9s, Nissan GT-Rs, an Audi R8 and a Ferrari F430. If you can't find anything to tickle your pickle among that little lot, what are you doing on this site anyway? Clear off, you imposter...

Oh, and just like that other great British institution of crazy pseudo-danger rides: Alton Towers, you even get the chance to buy a wonderfully expensive photo package of your gurning mug at day's end. That's my kind of speed camera.