Notes From the Hard Shoulder - James May [42]
The F430 is clearly still a touch flamboyant, especially in spider form, but it is inoffensively styled. It's more like a perfectly turned ankle than a pumped-up cleavage. Compare it with the Zonda thing that Hammond was driving in France. It's covered with bits of carbon fibre, which is now the Burberry check of the supercar world. It's all tinsel and has nothing to do with the joy of driving.
Call me old-fashioned, but my first requirement of a cooker is not that it's brushed stainless steel; it's that it roasts joints.
TRACK DAYS, OR THE FUTILITY OF GOING NOWHERE
The other day, I and my two Top Gear colleagues had a bit of a race. The venue was Castle Combe circuit, the cars were three '70s Italian exotics, and we were deeply embroiled in one of our old-car challenges.
Laps were driven against the clock; there were points won for beating a certain time and points lost for being late. Usual sort of thing.
This much I can reveal. I was last, in an old Lamborghini, and I'm absolutely delighted. I've never been especially good at circuit driving, I have immense difficulty in driving fast and talking to the camera at the same time, and in any case I always end up caring about our old nails too deeply. These are noble and dignified reasons for defeat, and better than the lame snivelling about misfires and wonky brakes that we're used to hearing from the other two.
Better still, the Castle Combe experience helped me to resolve one of the great conundrums of my life as a motoring journalist. Perhaps uniquely amongst my contemporaries, I have never done a track day. And now I've decided that I'm never going to. Never.
For what, exactly, is the point? Apart from the sartorial horror of having to dress up in Nomex overalls and gaily coloured fireproof booties, a track day achieves nothing.
Some of you may be thinking that a track day would make me a better driver. But I'm afraid this is just a rumour put around by advanced driving instructors who run track days, rather in the way that bald men are more virile according to bald men. A race track is not like the real world. There are no pedestrian crossings or bus lanes and all the cars are going in the same direction. I have never driven down the old A40 – one of my favourite roads – to find that someone has thoughtfully placed some fluorescent bollards at the turn-in points for bends. Neither has the local council erected a sign saying BRAKE just before that sharp right-hander near Thame. These are things for me to enjoy working out for myself.
And then there's Frank Melling, Telegraph Motoring's voice of classic motorcycling. He has vowed to take me on a bike track day, but I've decided this is a poor idea as well. I'd probably fall off or end up with a bad dose of Old Bike Face, a skin condition brought on by slavish adherence to classic motorcycling principles and riding through winter in an open-face helmet.
And why would I want to be a better rider? As the marketing people might say, it would be off-message vis-à-vis my core brand values of being a bit useless. If I was any good at riding a motorcycle, all the fear and fun would go out of it. Likewise, if I was good at driving on a circuit, I would be completely redundant at Top Gear, where it's my job to be Captain Slow and come last whenever we have a race.
Another school of thought says that track days will reveal something about your car. This much at least appears to be true, since the old Lambo revealed a '70s Malteser. I had braked heavily and rather late for a sudden chicane, or some other track feature with