We were testing at Monza and I put in a lap faster than Ayrton Senna in his McLaren F1. The faster you went, the more downforce you had, so in 4th, 5th and 6th gears, even in the wet, the car was just nailed to the track.

I suppose it should be something that’s currently racing today because the speed at which modern racing cars corner, brake and change gear is absolutely amazing. But because of the rules, modern LMP cars don’t have enough horsepower so I’m going back to the Group C days, when we had the 3 ½ litre V10 Formula One engines. I raced the Tony Southgate designed Toyota TSO10 from ’91 to ’93.

We had around 700 horsepower in a light car (750Kg) with full ground effects and low drag, which made it immensely fast, exciting and great fun to drive. We did well over 200 mph, pulled over 4g through most of the corners and close to 5g through some. After a while it was impossible to hold your head up. Your neck gave out and your head flopped onto your shoulder, which upset your natural balance.

So you drove around corners in blind faith, just in the knowledge that you’d done it before. It was so physical I actually used to get out of breath driving it.

We were testing at Monza and I put in a lap faster than Ayrton Senna in his McLaren F1. The faster you went, the more downforce you had, so in 4th, 5th and 6th gears, even in the wet, the car was just nailed to the track. The authorities decided it was getting crazy and they banned ground effects at the end of ’93. We were very lucky to drive these cars.

Click on the links to see the cars:

Maserati 250F
Auto Union Type C
Lotus 49
Porsche 917
AC Cobra
Mercedes-Benz W196

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