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heart rate was off the Richter scale. Wave upon wave of adrenalin hardened my veins. The back of my throat swel ed, my mouth dried and the left side of my face tingled. What the hel am I doing? I was so tired. I hadn’t slept the night before and would rather have griddled my testicles on the exhaust than drive at that particular moment.
    Get a grip, I thought, I’m here to get to F1. Problem was, so were the other lads.
    Sweat on the pad of my left foot made my toes slip inside my boots as I depressed the clutch and nudged the gearstick left and forward. Every movement I made felt strained and heavy.
    Moving into the pit lane, I joined the two long columns of the dummy grid. After what felt like an eternity (no more than five minutes) we were waved out of the pit lane under a green flag. More adrenalin, and now I needed to piss.
    The copious advice I’d been given swirled around in my head. ‘Lay some rubber on the start line for extra traction’, ‘Warm the tyres up’, ‘Anticipate the start lights’, ‘Go when the red goes out, don’t wait for the green’, ‘Don’t look in your mirrors’. After one short lap we formed up on the grid. I searched the start line gantry for the lights.
    A white board with ‘five seconds’ written on it suddenly appeared from behind the gantry. Acid flooded my stomach.
    Three seconds later the red lights sparked up. I knew that sometime between three and eight seconds after that they would switch to green.
    The engines in front of me began revving. The driver alongside started chasing the throttle – on, off, on, off, louder and louder. Adrenalin dumped painful y into my chest and my heart slowed into a hard, raging thump. The force of the beats was so strong I had to drop my chin and open my mouth to catch a breath. I winced; my eyes glazed over. GREEN.
    I bolted off the start line, then the wheels spun wildly. Another car instantly appeared to my right, then two others powered up to my left as we approached the first corner. I was jammed right in the middle.
    My thumping heart slowed, crashing against my ribs with the weight of a sledgehammer. For a moment I thought the damn thing might actual y stop.
    I swal owed hard, gulped for air and edged into the fast sweeping right-hander at Paddock Hil . I was at the centre of a swarm of jostling machines, so close you could have covered ten of us with a blanket.
    Somehow my body carried on the business of driving and breathing.
    The pack screamed through the dip at the bottom of the hil . The car in front bottomed out in the compression, shooting a shower of sparks at my helmet. I fol owed the four leaders into the tight right at Druids, narrowly avoiding the one immediately in front as he jammed on his brakes earlier than I expected.
    Gears changed on autopilot, iron-clenched fists dragged the steering from one direction to another.
    We blasted through the fast Graham Hil left-hander line astern, like a rol ercoaster without rails.
    Wheel to wheel, nose to tail, we hammered along the short straight at nearly 100mph. As we sped into the Surtees Esses I was so close to the guy in front I couldn’t see the raised kerb past his rear wheels.
    My jaw clamped shut.
    I somehow braked for the final corner, the right cal ed Clearways. I went in too fast and lost control of the front wheels. I knew I’d lose a position if I couldn’t accelerate on to the straight. I forced the throttle to try and drive out of the mistake. The car was already past the limit and the rear snapped sideways. Already off line for the corner, I slid off the edge of the track into the gravel trap and towards the welcoming tyre barrier.
    As the wal approached I pushed harder on the accelerator, peppering onlookers with stones from my spinning wheels but maintaining enough speed to get back on to the circuit. Having lost just one position, I rejoined the pack and we buzzed down the pit straight to complete the first lap. I was exhausted.
    During the eleven laps that