If Dijon was down and dirty with everyone seemingly fixing something or simply infused with the sheer excitement of the myriad twists and turns of the circuit then Magny Cours was fast and efficient. Arriving at the circuit it was clear to see where the money had been spent in the last few years as Magny Cours has some very nice facilities, pretty much what you would expect from a current F1 circuit. Having said that it didn't have the charm of years gone by that Dijon seemed to have aplenty. The layout was more anodyne too, with the typical modern F1 circuit, punctuated with long straights and tight hairpins seemingly rendering it much more of a 'point and squirt' circuit. It wasn't all bad though as it is still quite a lot of fun to drive.  Of the current crop of F1 circuits I have driven it is nowhere the sense of occasion and sheer brilliance of Spa but is far better than the lacklustre Silverstone.

If Dijon was hot then Magny Cours was even hotter. The day started with brilliant sunshine and deep blue skies. It stayed that way throughout.

Following J5 into 'Circuit Nevers Magny Cours

As always after sign on was the briefing. Pictures once again courtesy of Picman

The Euro trippers still buzzing from Dijon attend the drivers' briefing

J5 (first on right) runs through the briefing with his usual aplomb for one liners!

Sarah the powerhouse of BaT joins J5 with the briefing

J5 pointing toward the pit-exit for those in need of 98Ron 'sans plomb'

Meanwhile in the BaT pit-garage Scruffy pours in the Super 'sans plomb' into J5's eRise. Scruffy was in 'horsepower' mode throughout the whole trip, he looked happy though!

The weather was as you can see, gorgeous, though lucky for me there was some shade at the end of the pit-lane. As usual there was a plethora of exotica and one of my faves the Noble M12 3R

The gorgeous and purposeful Noble M12 3R prepped and ready to go

After an hour or so of working the pit-lane Martin popped over and gave me the thumbs up for a drive. Magny Cours does have some pretty fast sweeping corners though these are mainly the very fast left first turn before Estoril which can be pretty hairy.

Lovely orange Exige (which is the inspiration behind the websites background colour), in the background is the ballsy first left

Naturally seeing a fast sweeping corner is like dangling a carrot in front of my nose and well, I just had to try it faster and faster. Eventually with a turn-in of just over 90mph the back of the car went a bit light just after turn-in which I corrected without much of a problem. The trouble was that the next part of the corner tightens further so I was running out of track and attempted to turn-in whilst barely out of a slight slide. Result? The car didn't want to know and in an instant with opposite lock on I was flying backwards across the track, through some grass and very nearly ending up on the last part of the pitlane exit (which is out of view in above pic)! All very dramatic and no harm done. Incidentally a F355 Challenge car did much the same but likely at higher speeds which ended in a brushing of the tyre wall. Aside from that I totally behaved myself and had a lot of fun with the torque (all 220lb/ft of it) from Martin's Roadster turbo and fairly gooned round 180R, well it was very hard not to provoke a slide just for the fun of it!

Martin as you can see got carried away with the gooning!

Very naughty, but lots of fun!

Martin in action again, this time a view from behind

Me, showing commitment halfway through Estoril

Same corner, but with F355 I have just overtaken!

As you can see from the pics, Martin was very much in gooning mode and really enjoying himself out there. Though I had the one dramatic spin, Martin was the ever-present spinning top with some very nice pirouettes!

All in all this was a fantastic trip and every corner was of course relived over some dinner alfresco that evening.

A very big thanx to Martin once again for inviting me and letting me drive/spin his car and of course to J5, Sarah and the BaT crew for organising the whole trip.