Driving on the Limit

This Audi TT is a car capable of being driven on or pretty close to the limit. It’s a well-balanced car, turbo-charged with four-wheel drive, with higher performance than you would get in a “normal” TT. It’s been created for the driving school at Silverstone, so it is something that can be driven very hard. I haven’t driven it very much but I can feel what it will do pretty quickly. That’s something that has stayed with me even all these years after I stopped racing. You never lose that. That’s part of the skill that God gives you that’s got nothing to do with you. Of course, you can pick it up, and you can move it along, and as you go along you develop it. Once I have a feel for a car I think my ability lets me drive it very quickly.

This car can be driven pretty hard. It tends to under-steer rather than oversteer, which is a good thing. You see that as you drive in the first corner or two. That’s a good thing for a road car as well as a racecar. In a situation like this you want a car that’s an invitation to drive, not a challenge, because if you have a challenge it just gives you too much of a hard time and takes longer to figure out what it’s going to do. You then spend more time trying to drive the car than go fast. You see as we go round a circuit that you can push into a corner too hard and it starts to scrub off speed as it slides outward in the corner. As soon as I know that is going to happen at this corner I try to feel what the optimum speed is going to be so it doesn’t scrub off that speed. It’s not so much that I am working that out though, but feeling what it will do because I have the experience in me to do that.