KEY POINTS:
I remember travelling from London to Scotland on a train for a friend's stag weekend and being offered a go at a clay pigeon shooting game on a computer console. Couldn't hit a damn thing.
Part of the stag weekend entailed shooting a real gun at live clay
pigeons. I won the day, hitting about 75 per cent.
Being an ex-motorcycle racer, I also tried the amusement arcade mini-racer game, and due to all my crashes never finished a lap. I tried the race-car module next, and did rather well.
Little was I to know what the REAL thing was like, and I was only the passenger.
I had no idea being strapped into a V8 Supercar would be like getting fitted for a straitjacket.
The four-point harness was reefed tight, and I was beginning to wonder how I was going to breathe.
From the outside, these V8s may look like a distant cousin of the road-going model, but inside it's a different ball game.
The dash is reminiscent of an early Nasa workstation, with big switches and even bigger lights.
Modern technology is clearly evident in the form of the high-tech rev counter and multi-function display that allows the driver to scroll through everything from lap times to brake-bias. As for the rest of the interior, you might as well be in a prison cell, all bars and bare metal. Mind you, the seat is nice and snug. The reason, I was to find out later.
Shane Price's Jack Daniels black No 7 car started with a series of clicks, whirs, and clunks, followed by a horrendous noise bellowing through the entire vehicle. I thought it had blown up.
If you can imagine a bucket of nuts and bolts being put into one of those mechanical paint mixers, you wouldn't be far off. Throw in the whine of straight-cut gears, limited slip diffs, no soundproofing and you get the idea.
As we lurch, pop, fart and bang down pit lane I'm waiting for the blue smoke to come pouring into the cabin indicating something let loose.
Accelerating down the straight towards turn one, the noise doesn't get any quieter, but seems to smooth out. It's almost as if all the moving parts are starting to harmonise. A bit like a Welsh choir that's done its warming up and is now belting out Land Of My Fathers at full noise. Loud, but sort of pleasant, making the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.
Apparently these cars have a suspension system that mechanics spend hours, if not days, setting up. You could have fooled me. You could count the number of matches in a matchbox if you drove over one, it's that hard. Mustn't complain though, I'm only along for the ride.
As we get up to speed through turn one and head towards the esses my body is thrown from side to side with the G-forces. As we exit the right-hander onto the back straight, the rear end is moving around like a dancer's backside shimmying and shaking, but in a controlled sort of way. As Price flattens it, my head is slammed back into the headrest, while, at the same time, it feels as if someone is shoving me hard in the middle of my back as we launch down the straight.
Just as I start to appreciate how stable the car is at high speed, I'm thrown, very, very, hard, against the harness. Now I know why I was strapped in so tight.
If I had eaten anything it would now be on the inside of the windscreen. As it is, I feel as if I've been eviscerated. We've just gone from 270km/h to 55km/h in about 140m.
As the pain from my shoulders reaches my brain, I'm slammed back into the seat as we accelerate hard out of the hairpin, climbing through the gears, straight-lining the two lefts.
Next thing I know, my stomach is on the floor of the car as we approach the climbing right-hander.
I'm almost weightless, pressed hard up against the outside of the seat, and my head hard up against the roll cage, as we crest the hill and bolt down the front straight, where the stands and pit garages flash past in a blur of colour.
Three laps later I climb out of the car back in the pits and came to a conclusion you've got to do it - not play at it.
Jeez, that was a hell of a ride.
