The Johnny Herbert Experience at Rockingham offers a drive in a race spec F355 Challenge around the in-field National Circuit, and it's serious, serious fun. The car has a fibreglass body, race suspension, brakes, 380bhp and P-Zero slicks so sticky you could stick the whole thing to your fridge door.
As the drive is sharing track space with Elises, souped up Imprezzas and Seat Cupras there's quite a few people kicking around but on track traffic was rarely a problem and when encountered offered the chance to take the odd breath and occasionally blink.
The "Experience" started with a briefing, when a few pointers concerning, cars, speed, corners and physics were covered, along with the usual safety stuff, and then we were off under the tunnel to the infield circuit, where we picked up our lids, and met our instructor, Dave Manners. I was expecting a pimply 16 year old but I was surprised to see he is even older than me.
As all the drives are shared I had a 20 minute wait whilst my fellow driver has his go. Eventually the great yellow Ferrari came back into the pits, and it was my turn. I got into the five point harness and waited for the "don't take it passed X thousand RPM" instruction, which didn't come. The only thing I was told not to do was put the handbrake on, as it warps the disks when they're hot. I hadn't been planning to use much handbrake on my way around so I didn't see this as too much of a problem.
As they'd requested during the briefing I took the first couple of laps pretty steadily, to reassure Dave I wasn't going to try and deliberately kill him, and to understand the circuit a little better, as well as the car and in particular the interesting Ferrari gearbox.
The circuit is marked with cones, indicating braking points, turn in and exit points, so it was like a game of high speed join the dots. After the first right hander there's a lovely chicane which can be taken flat out, which is fantastic with a group of howling banshees over your right hand shoulder.
As I started to press-on I was staggered by the amazing amount of grip, although a couple of rear end twitches when exiting a hairpin did remind me that booting it too early was not advisable. The brakes were heavy and require a very strong stab, which isn't easy when you've got legs most sparrows would laugh at. The circuit is quite short, and generally quite twisty, so flat out we only managed to get up to around 120mph, which felt about half that.
Dave was great, he spoke only when necessary and the odd touch on the wheel in my early fast laps prevented us both from making the odd agricultural excursion, and certainly helped build confidence in the car and my ability. But then after what seemed like five minutes, he said "we'll be going in on this lap". I thought he was joking, but a check on my watch told the truth - the 20 minutes were up.
We sat in the car for a few minutes as he explained what I could have done better, and graded my performance and then we swapped seats and he showed me how it should be done. Days of Thunder ? More like Days of Chunder.
So for £299 for a mere 20 minutes was it worth it ? Every penny. And more.
If I were to do it again, and could afford it, I'd take an Elise out first, get to know the track, and then drive the Ferrari as it should be driven.
That aside, the only problem is trying to wipe the smile off my face.
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