Confessions of a track instructor

‘You’ve got the best job in the world.’ It’s a sentence I’ve heard countless times, usually just after I’ve driven a demonstration lap around the Portimão race track where I work in some vastly powerful machine bearing AMG or Porsche badges.

I can see their point, but the problem is such words are usually uttered as I’m strapping myself into the passenger seat as they take to the track for the first time. ‘We’ll see,’ is my usual reply. The circuit is always the same, the fleet of cars is always the same, the weather in the Algarve is mostly the same, and yet for a race school instructor every passenger lap is a journey into the unknown.