At Malcolm’s suggestion, I attended a one-day course at Car Limits today, at North Weald Airfield. Run by Andrew Walsh, himself a very successful racer and to compete again in the Lotus Elise Trophy in 2012, the aim was to teach me more about grip limit and to improve my confidence in the car during cornering.

I pretty much always go away from training days having learned something new and today was no exception. Andy got us used to cornering at speed, with no pedal input and a very light grip on the wheel, but then introduced a technique that really surprised me: braking hard after turning in. This is something you would otherwise be warned against doing, especially in something like a 911 where the majority of the car’s weight is so far back. But it really did work, allowing me to enter that same corner easily 10mph faster.

The final session of the day is a gymkhana were we tear round a course in our own cars using the techniques learned during the day. Above is the VBox video from my session – apologies for the strange woolly hat on my passenger – it was pretty cold today!

I’m very grateful to one of the other students, David Cross, for letting me have a go in his splendid 997 GT3. I could certainly feel the extra power (around 415bhp against my 266) and was able to get the back out much more easily; yet its a very comfortable car to be in.