A McLaren F1 and the Nürburgring

Despite all the laps I’ve completed since, the first is the one I remember most. Nothing can prepare you for it, not even watching Derek Bell’s ‘In car 956’ video until the tape wore out, as I did before I went. Even today I still think its creation is the greatest single achievement in the history of motorsport. The idea that one day you could actually even learn which way it went, let alone the intricacies of braking, turn in, apex and exit points, surface and camber changes and which kerbs to take and which to avoid seemed, frankly, fanciful to me. It is the absolute truth that after three laps I left feeling I knew it less well than when I’d arrived.

But I digress. I duly presented myself to McLaren in an ill-fitting, probably machine-washable suit, where some kindly person took pity on this poor sap who’d driven from England for nothing. He happened to be called Jonathan Palmer, he’d done the lion’s share of the development work on the F1 and then as now and unlike so many Formula 1 drivers, was a total petrolhead. And the moment I told him I’d come out in the Porsche his eyes lit up as did mine: that yellow 968 was going to be the key that unlocked the door to the McLaren F1.

So I let Jonathan take the Porsche around the new track and of course I sat next to him. And to this day I’ve not been more sideways in a car without falling off the track. Jonathan soon realised the car lacked a limited slip differential so he’d just wrench the back loose with weight transference before the corner rather than throttle pedal at the apex. And somewhere there are pictures of the 968 at 90 degrees to the intended direction of travel without the corner even in sight, with me grinning like a loon in the passenger seat.

After which I asked, casual as you like, if we could do the same in the F1. To which Jonathan replied, ‘sadly not. There are a lot of clients here who want to go in it and it wouldn’t do for them to see a journalist taking their space.’ Of course I understood and was on the point of saying so when Jonathan said, ‘but I suppose we could take it to the old track. They wouldn’t be able to see us there…’

I couldn’t believe it. Jonathan Palmer was going to drive me around the old Nürburgring in a McLaren F1. He only had time to do one lap, and he’d last done one 11 years earlier sharing a Porsche 956 with Keke Rosberg in the last 1000km race to be held on the old track, but I didn’t care. It was my birthday, Christmas, Easter and wedding anniversary all rolled into one.

Until they turned us away at the barrier. No, the F1 could not go on the Nordschleife they said, as they waved a coach and a VW Golf towing a caravan out onto the track without a second look. Why? The F1 prototype wasn’t wearing numberplates, the track was technically a public road so it was illegal to let it out. So we shot back to the paddock, unscrewed the plate from the first car we found, stuck it in the windscreen and that was that.

What followed will remain the most vivid experience I will ever have in the passenger seat of a road car. The performance was of a kind I have never experienced before, and by then I’d driven an XJ220. But the F1 was something completely different. As was Palmer’s handling of it. The combination of his raw talent combined with a car into which he was so completely dialled in produced a demonstration of car control as vivid as any in my recollection. Did I mention the circuit was quite wet too? If I’d known then just how difficult F1s are in the wet I’d have been more amazed even than that.

I recall being very scared, utterly captivated, at times bewildered by what he was persuading the car to do and always aware of the commentary he was providing from that central seat. ‘Ah yes, I remember this bit, think we’re flat over this crest, quite sideways there isn’t it, you just need to be confident with it and with this throttle response the car’s easy to balance…’ and so on, all at about 130mph.

There were times without number when I thought he’d overdone in but in fact he was just having fun. By the time we were done the only wreck was me. Jonathan waved a cheery goodbye and went back to scaring the shit out of his punters on the new track.

I drove the Porsche home slowly, savouring the memories, chuffed beyond words that I’d somehow pulled off the impossible story. A few weeks later I met Jonathan again at another track with another F1 to drive it myself, gather all its performance data and complete what is still the only complete road test evaluation of the world’s greatest supercar.