We drive the Nissan 370Z at Goodwood

July 2010

Two places you might be humbled driving a Nissan 370Z roadster – Le Mans car parks and the supercar paddock at Goodwood. Still, didn’t bother me – this was my first ever drive up Lord March’s infamous 1.16-mile hill outside his West Sussex house and 328bhp is more than enough power for someone who didn’t know where he was going.

The roadster we’re driving is pocket money compared to some of the precious metal in the supercar run, and in the four-million pound traffic jam at the start I’m aware it probably costs the same as a single taillight unit of the Bugatti Veyron I’m (gingerly) following.

Manoevring isn’t a strong point of your average supercar. Asked to reverse into the crammed holding pen, the driver of the burnt orange Spyker C-8 Aileron takes a swift look over his shoulders, pauses briefly and then flicks open his scissor door to lean half his body out for a better look. Top down, I’ve got no problem.

I spy Kevin McCloud of Grand Designs fame standing next to an electric Tesla sports car he’s about to drive up. While writer for sister mag Evo Ollie Marriage is making up for a celeb deficit with a drive in Citroen’s stunning GT concept.

My insider for hill driving tips is a bloke called Darren Achilles, whose proper job to look after a 350Z race car to be driven by touring car star Anthony Reid. Any tricky bits? Apparently the left-hander once you’ve got past the main grandstands is tight and masked by a hill brow. What speed shall I take it? “You’re a man, you’ll figure it out,” he says languidly. Great. Apparently a magazine competition winner doing the other Sunday run in the Nissan has been asking all sorts of questions about cambers and lines – I’m thinking he had the right idea.

At the start, all the relaxed admiring of cars like the utterly beautiful Alfa Zagato TZ3 Corsa one-off is suddenly over and I’m cramming on the helmet as V8s, V10s and, in front of me, the W16, decimate any remaining countryside noises. The jam moves quickly, too quickly for me to gather myself. The Veyron is in front and then, suddenly it isn’t. I’m still goggling at its unbelievable disappearing act when the marshall is giving me the very casual wave – off you go then, it says.

The 370Z is pretty swift, it’s 3.7 V6 helping it to sprint to 62mph in 5.5secs. But the Veyron has just displayed it can halve that, so I’ve disengaged traction control to entertain the startline crowd with a bit of wheelspin instead. The Goodwood motto is: if you’re not going to be blisteringly quick, entertain. It’s practically mowed into Lord March’s lawns.

That over I’m at the first righthander and sweeping through with absolutely no time to appreciate speed, sense of occasion, the grandstand crowds either side, the lovely weather or the Alfa cloverleaf sculpture outside Lord March’s mansion. I’ve got corner fixation. I’ve seen The Corner (as it’s unnervingly called) as a spectator, but where is it from the road?

There are the twin big screens, there’s the brow –there it is! Brake, brake, brake. Change down and hope the crowd think I’m the one blipping the throttle with my braking foot (in fact it’s the Nissan, which automatically matches revs with wheelspeed). I’m through and realize I could have added another 20mph to that, but what the crowd loses in entertainment, Nissan gains in an intact 370Z.

Now we’re on a country lane, a flint wall to the left, trees overhead. The wide open spaces of the first half are replaced with a dark tunnel followed by chink of light right where a corner kink (called Flintwall) forces you toward the car-hungry wall.

Walking up here later I discover it’s really steep (ithe track rises 300ft) but from the roadster the hill part barely registers. Then there’s the finish – a black and white rectangular arch in the tree tunnel – and that’s it, I’ve driven the hill. Something I hadn’t done roughly a minute ago.

But I feel I’ve just driven it, not properly attacked it. Please sir or Lord, can I do it again? NO BURNOUTS ON THE WAY DOWN – a marshall’s sign reads. Damn, should have done a proper one on the way up.

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