‘Intrigued to see how you get on in that,’ he says, pointing at the Kia. I’m just as curious to see how he fares in his tiny, ancient Fiat 126, which seems to cower in the shadow of my much bigger machine. Between us we run some calculations: his entire car weighs less than the Kia’s battery with me sitting on top of it. The EV6 GT I’ve borrowed for today is four times heavier than his 126, but it does offset its extra mass somewhat with seventeen times more power.
I wander around the paddock and note that my EV is the only one in the field. It’s also the only brand new car, one of just two with four-wheel drive, the most valuable by an embarrassing margin and around three times more powerful than anything else. But it’s also an enormous electric crossover SUV and twice as heavy as the average car here. And if ever there was a grassroots motorsport discipline that punished size and weight, autosolo must be it.
I weigh it all up, but still I can’t work out if I look like the most shameless kind of pot hunter, bowling up with way more horsepower than everybody else, or like I missed the turning to Aldi. Nor do I know how this is going to play out. I could be on my way to the top step of the podium or the bottom of the timesheets – I have no idea which.
