to appear on a blind bend. I slowed to check for oncoming traffic before veering off down a track with no discernible markings.
My left thumb clicked at the handbrake button as I toyed with the idea of a sharp about-face. I topped a gentle crest and the view widened. Just past a field of grazing sheep lay a security entrance. Three feet and two inches to the right of the middle of nowhere.
The security guard spilt his tea and leapt to his feet as I pulled up at the gate. He emerged from his cabin and approached my window. ‘Do you know where you’re going?’
‘Yes,’ I lied.
‘Who are you here with?’
That was a trickier one, but I dealt with it.
‘ Oh, OK, just follow the one-way system around.’
I drove into a vast expanse of clear skies, grass, concrete and airfield. The path ahead led to an old DC3 passenger plane. I followed the broken concrete track to the right. An office building stood amongst a haphazard collection of large green metal warehouses. I dropped down a ramp into a staging area in front of a much larger hangar. At the far end of it, on the edge of the airfield, lay a very dilapidated cabin with ‘Production’ daubed on its side. A Harrier Jump Jet was parked in the middle distance.
It seemed I’d arrived at the ‘Studio’. With a little time in hand, I walked the site.
The airfield was as flat as a billiard table, with neat green fields surrounding the tarmac landing strips. I couldn’t make out any kind of circuit in the sea of grey mist. A tired silver tree-line separated the earth from the clear blue sky.
The place must have had a real buzz in its glory days, first during the Second World War and then as a Harrier proving ground. On this still morning I could almost hear the banter of aircrew scrambling to their aircraft.
Now it felt like the Land that Time Forgot. Rusted control panels littered the area. Cracked concrete billets jostled with disused hangars and pebble-dashed Seventies monstrosities.
I paid an obligatory pre-match visit to the nearby loos. Two fresh pieces of graffiti read: ‘Fuck Jeremy Clarkson’ and ‘Richard Hammond is a’. Sadly, Hammond’s eulogy had never been completed. My laughter echoed down the deserted corridor. I felt like a madman.
I returned to the production hut and gave it the once over. A cardboard cut-out of a policeman stood guard at the window beside a larger cut-out still of John Prescott, an ironing board, a moth-eaten mini-sofa and a cluster of toxic coffee cups and Bic biros.
What the hell did they do here?
A worn chair overlooked a grubby telephone which sat, inert, on a filthy wood veneer table. A printed list of ‘key contacts’ was pinned to the wall, belying the cabin’s absence of discernible function.
Room 2 was marginally better appointed, with a small TV set surrounded by VHS tapes but no player. A few photos of random celebrities decorated the flimsy, cobwebbed walls.
Room 3 contained a large hanging rail from which hung a gold sequin jacket, a flower power shirt and an enormous pair of jeans. A crate of Red Bull lurked in the corner. The place stank of fags, mildew and Eau de Man.
With an uncertain recollection of my last tetanus jab, I opted to wait inside my car and nod off to some filthy hard house tunes.
I woke to the sound of rushing gravel as a small hatchback pulled up in front of me. I guessed this was my man by his silver hair and media issue denim jacket. I climbed out to greet him.
He hitched up his trousers and shuffled towards me like a glum but familiar uncle on a rare visit home. It was only 9.30, but his five o’clock shadow suggested he had already had a long day. He clasped a bursting folder of papers under one arm.
He looked in every direction but mine. I moved to shake his hand. With some reluctance he eventually reciprocated.
‘Right …’
‘Great to meet you, Andy.’
‘Did you tell anyone you were coming?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said.
‘OK, good.’
Andy explained that the track would open up for some fast laps at ten. I had no idea of what the track even looked like, what car I would be driving or what test lay ahead, so it wasn’t easy to prepare for what came next.
Andy unlocked a blue Ford Focus in the car park and it dawned on me that this underpowered front-wheel-drive affair would be his measuring stick of my performance. Years of racing experience in Formula 1 style machines went out the window; it was time to rely on a few bad habits.
Andy hunched over the wheel and drove us serenely around the track. But for the occasional steely-eyed glare at a corner, his eyes sparkled as if he was enjoying some private joke.
The silver fox indicated the areas I was ‘not allowed to drive across’, such as the white lines on the exit of the first corner, coming out of the second corner, and especially those marking the ‘Hammerhead’ chicane. I nodded respectfully, as you do on the headmaster’s tour of the school grounds.
The track looked straightforward enough, and there were some ballsy fast corners in the middle that could be hairy in a proper car.
‘This one sorts the men out from the boys,’ Andy said with something approaching relish.
A riot of skid marks and freshly carved-up grass around the final corners did indeed suggest that the last two turns might be treacherous.
Andy’s expression darkened again as he parked on the start line and he compressed his lips. ‘You start each lap here, yeah, and I’ll be timing you. Go across the line and then I’ll reset so you can go again.’
‘So it’s not flying laps then?’
‘No. Standing start every time.’
‘How many do I get?’ I asked.
‘Um … we’ll do a few. OK.’
Andy disembarked. I jumped into the driver’s seat and clunk-clicked. The foam seat didn’t give much, it felt upright and too close to the wheel. I shuffled it back for some leg-room, adjusted the steering higher and removed the valet paper from the foot-well. I gave the controls a quick once-over. A five-speed manual box and a fairly solid brake pedal.
I searched the dashboard for the traction control button and turned it off for the closest its 1.6 litres could get to maximum, unbridled acceleration. I envisaged making a few reconnaissance laps to learn the track, then posting a ballistic time.
As I looked up Andy was gesticulating with his right hand and brandishing a stopwatch with his left.
‘Shit, hang on …’
I grabbed the gear-stick and jammed it into first gear, simultaneously gunning the engine to a respectable 4,000rpm. Andy’s arm dropped and I didn’t stick around to ask questions. Dumping the clutch, I lurched off the line, wheels spinning and clawing at the track.
Less revs next time …
The
