First published in Performance Car magazine

Life is all about moments. Not hours, or days. Just moments. And they really couldn’t get any better than this. Let me explain; I’m doing the day job, keeping my students on the straight and narrow here at the Nürburgring Nordschleife (OK, just the narrow). We’re driving the new Nissan GTR on a rather exclusive Goodwood Road Racing Club trackday. We started this damp day with a couple of sighting laps, me driving, students listening. It’s exceedingly unwise to drive the sighting laps at any more than a walking pace. The Nordschleife is difficult enough to learn, without your instructor transforming it in a green blur punctuated by nausea and toilet urges.

Having reached the last hour of track time, all lessons completed, with a definite dry line apparent for at least 10 miles of 14, I’m hoping that somebody wants a demo lap. At nearly €200 per lap in material costs, the big Nissan’s not allowed out without somebody paying the bill.

I loiter around the car, like a drug addict needing a fix, nervously fiddling with my lid and driving gloves. Sure enough, people arrive. Laps are paid for. We arrive back in pitlane, brakes smoking, tyres peeling. Nissan jackets are checking various temperatures while I gently come down from my automotive high. We’ve got minutes before the track closes for the day. Probably the last dry day of 2008.
The boss taps the window.
“Derek would like a lap,” he shouts inside.

Derek Bell? Porsche legend? Group-C hero? 6-minute something Nordschleife expert? I’m undoing my seat belt in an instant, ready to take the passenger side.
“No, no, no! You’re driving him. He’s passenger.”

Derek’s already jumping into the passenger seat. I nervously re-fasten my seat belt as a large smile in a brown leather jacket thrusts a hand across the transmission tunnel and into mine for a warm shake.

“Don’t worry,” says Derek, “I just want to see what she’ll do! I’ve been driving the 997 all day doing demo laps. I still need a map to get around this place fast!”
My fixed and waxy grin is threatening to separate the top of my head from the bottom. Should I be proud or petrified?

We shoot out of pitlane and onto the track. Plunging into the dip at 150mph through the first section, we reach the first braking area and the GTR digs in and begins the lap for real. The instant gear changes and phenomenal grip are among the first things Derek notices.
He jokes; “It’s a computer game, isn’t it?”
Through Hatzenbach I begin to talk him through how the Atessa system needs a heavy right foot to push through natural understeer and into the realm of computer induced power oversteer.
We’re talking all the time, making occasional eye-contact, the speed increasing. I’m clicking up and down the gearbox like they’re the buttons on my PS3 controller. Pulling the next gear on short straights for less than a second or two before clicking back down the ‘box at the speed of PlayStation.
As we approach the half-way point, an idea emerges.
Anchors away into Breidscheid bridge, we scream to a dead stop at the side of the track. The trackside marshal transforms instantly from dormant huddled shape into a blur of shouted words and muddled flags.
I run around the front of the car, radiated heat from the huge Brembos toasting my legs, Derek trots around the back.
Seatbelt clicked in, the marshal has figured out we’ve not crashed and we’re probably not on fire (yet, the discs are smoking more now). I point to the slot on the transmission tunnel for GTR to be put in to manual. And Derek gives it the berries up the hill, pushing the car’s limit on the very first corner.
Driving the GTR fast on a narrow circuit requires faith in the gas pedal and the Atessa system’s ability to distribute the 500 or so horses to the correct wheel. Derek knows this, but the first time we run into a corner early and fast, he lifts on instinct. I did the same. But then he boots it and the computers work their magic, pulling the car around its own y-axis using the power.
Derek’s not working the ‘box half as much I was, but we’re doing a similar pace for about 10% less workload it seems. And this is his first half-lap. We’re both having a ball. All thoughts of work, instruction and customers have disappeared, we’re just two contemporaries out for a responsible fuck-around in somebody else’s car.
We pull into the pitlane, under the glow of the red ‘track closed’ lights. We get out of the hot GTR, and Derek shakes my hand and says;
‘Nice car. Nice driving.’
If I could take a moment of my life, cut it out and stick it in a scrapbook to keep for ever...

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