Bentley Speed 8 Le Mans car
We don't usually feature racing cars on these pages, but this was an opportunity too good to miss. Bentley gave us the chance to have a few laps behind the wheel of a Le Mans 24 Hours winner.
The Speed 8 looks great, is super-quick and can corner at incredible speeds. But driving Bentley's racer didn't just prove that it is an amazing piece of machinery. A few laps left us exhausted, so the Le Mans drivers must be superbly fit, have amazing concentration and be clever strategists, too.
We don't usually feature racing cars on these pages, but this was an opportunity too good to miss. Bentley gave us the chance to have a few laps behind the wheel of a Le Mans 24 Hours winner.
The firm's victory in the famous race didn't come easily. When the Speed 8 took the 4pm chequered flag last June, it marked the end of a gruelling multi-million pound, three-year campaign.
The British team had faced formidable opposition on the track from the R8 of VW Group stablemate Audi, plus criticism from the media, who said the Speed 8 was no more than the Audi with a roof and a new paint job. It was incredibly hard work to bring the car home first to give Bentley its sixth win - and first since 1930. The drivers will have been hot, battered by noise and exhausted, subjected to huge cornering forces and fighting to concentrate.
How do we know? Because in a special and exclusive 'first drive' at the Paul Ricard circuit in France, we were left shattered - and that was after only four laps. At 200mph, advanced aerodynamics push this 900kg racer down with a weight of 2.5 tonnes. This means that its cornering speeds are beyond belief. Even turning through bends at our mediocre track-day pace, we were amazed. But when five-times Le Mans winner Derek Bell took us out at pro-per race speed, we seriously thought we were going to crash.
With 600bhp from its 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 engine (based on the Audi R8's 3.6-litre unit), the Speed 8 can hit 215mph and sprint from 0-60mph in less than 3.2 seconds. The powerplant is reliable and flexible and, in six years of testing and racing, the only unit to fail was when the Le Mans-winner over-heated during a victory parade in Paris!
While it isn't the fastest car in the world, the Speed 8 is certainly quick enough to keep you busy at the wheel, using the gearshift paddles of the six-speed sequential box. We were thankful Bentley introduced power-steering this year - Bell says piloting the 2002 Le Mans entry was really hard work.
But the most amazing part of the Speed 8, apart from the Batmobile-like styling, is the braking. Those 14-inch carbon discs rub the speed off so fast that you're hanging on to the five-point seatbelts, and feel bruised for days afterwards. But while we were battered, we knew we were lucky to have glimpsed life in the cockpit of a Le Mans winner.
