The F1 car in question wore 2008 livery but employed 2006-spec aerodynamics, a recycled Peugeot 3-litre V10 and a retired Prost chassis. I didn’t know the price tag, but I reckoned the car cost a bomb, and I didn’t wish to be the Singaporean who blew it up by over-revving the engine or something.
Said engine was closer to F0.9 than F1, because it developed “just” 700bhp and revved to “only” 11,000rpm. The car weighed 580kg and the joker inside (me) weighed about 65kg, so the power-to-weight ratio was almost 1100bhp per tonne.
There it was at Paul Ricard Circuit, standing in the French sunlight, a potentially misguided missile waiting to gift me the drive (or fright) of my life. I had only two laps in this most super of supercars. My plan was to take it easy on my first lap and go ballistic on my second. I hoped to give Alex Yoong a run for the ringgit. I wanted to be fast and furious. I could feel the need for speed.
I could also feel the engine stalling. Damn, I didn’t release the clutch slowly enough. Ensconced and embarrassed in the surprisingly spacious cockpit, surrounded by endless carbon fibre, I was pushed back to the line where the whole starting procedure was repeated by the Renault crew without complaint.
Before giving me the go-ahead once more, the point man reminded me to release the clutch progressively. I tried again. This time, I got it right and off I went! Oh… my… god!! 
The acceleration was absolutely brutal. The car accelerated so hard that my chest was seemingly compressed on the straights – long or short. Every instantaneous gearchange, using Playstation-friendly paddles, was a controlled explosion that rocked me like a rag doll, with further punishment dished out by the hurricane-like turbulence around the cockpit.
There was no speedometer to tell me how fast I was going, but it felt like somewhere between high speed and warp speed, with an epic engine soundtrack right behind me at 10,000rpm.
Corners came up almost as quickly as I spotted them, with my view ahead blocked by just a windswept little windscreen, which was bookended by Bridgestone tyres that looked like big black stones. And I was seated low, with my bum mere inches from the tarmac.
I tried my best to brake late and brake hard, letting the carbon brakes do what they were engineered to do. And I tried to steer into the corner and out of it as smoothly as I could, bravely flooring the throttle pedal only at the exit.
The car had traction control in case this pilot lost self-control. There was even an automatic downshift mode in the 6-speed sequential transmission to keep the engine on the boil when slowing down for sharp corners, in case I forgot (which I almost did).
This was one test drive I remembered for a long, long time (it’s been seven years). The sheer speeds, the glorious noises and the intense physical sensations of an F1 car, even the simplified example I drove, were out of this world. 
