I’VE DREAMED of driving a Formula 1 car all my life. But I never dreamed that, when it finally happened, I would be driving it in a room tucked away on an anonymous industrial estate on the outskirts of Bristol, in the west of England.
It began exactly as I imagined, exactly as I’ve seen a thousand times on TV: Cinched tightly into a hip-hugging carbonfibre tub, gripping a butterfly steering wheel festooned with brightly coloured buttons. Pirelli slicks towering over my knuckles as I look down the track. A voice crackling in my helmet: “Radio check.”
“I hear you.” There’s an incessant, industrial-strength drone in my ears, the sound of a 1.5-litre turbocharged V6, idling at 5000rpm. “Right, you’re good to go,” says the voice. “It’s best to feather the throttle a bit in the first four gears. Otherwise, all you get is wheelspin.”
“Okay.”
Full disclosure: I’ve always found driving games interminably boring. No matter how sophisticated their responses, how realistic their visuals, they’re a poor substitute for the real thing. None has ever, even for a moment, given me the quiet satisfaction, the simple joy, I get from driving a real car on real roads
