Peak performer: Racing an Alpine A110 at Silverstone

So this race should be a doddle, I’m led to believe. Just a bunch of old rich blokes nobbing about in a car they can’t drive very well on a circuit they’ve never been to.

Hmm. No. As it turns out, of the 18 drivers, there are a few young hot-shoes who want to make it as GT drivers and some older blokes who used to race in the Renault Clio Cup – the kind of madcap series that births touring car drivers. Laurent Hurgon, the Renault Sport engineer who sets all of the Nürburgring lap times in hot RS models, is competing in the series but by no means a guaranteed top-six finisher.

Plus this lot know the cars. And they’ve been to Silverstone before. And I don’t speak loads of French, the team don’t speak loads of English, so when setting it up, we’re just winging it. And one of my team-mates wants the limited-slip differential out of my car between races because it’s more aggressive than the one in his; which is fair enough, because he’s paying to be there and I get to see how this changes the handling.

Anyway, that’s the excuses mostly out of the way for two races – one Saturday, one Sunday – which each last 25 minutes plus a lap and have a rolling start.

Silverstone is a big circuit but when your last race here was in a Citroën C1, it feels shorter than normal. The race A110, with 266bhp and at 1135kg, is a nice fit for it on Michelin slicks that provide a fairly mega amount of lateral grip. Those, plus a proper sequential gearbox in place of the road car’s dual-clutch, plus all of the safety accoutrements, mean the A110 feels like a terrific race car. But there are elements of the road car’s character intact. It’s very agile, happy to move around as you lift and turn-in, though because of the limited-slip differential that is absent from the road car, it hooks up under acceleration more easily – albeit with more grip and traction than power now, with heavier steering that has bags of feel. With a less aggressive differential, there’s less initial hook-up under acceleration and a more pendulous swing into oversteer later.

With all cars making the same power and having the same aerodynamics, passing is hard, so there seems to be the time-honoured Clio Cup passing technique of sticking your car in the way of somebody else’s and letting them avoid you.

Getting to grips with it, I finish 12th out of 18 in race one and 13th in race two with all body panels intact, which, at £90,000 for the car and another £90k or so to race it for a year, is just as well. If I had the wherewithal, I’d be back.