KEY POINTS:
Last year at the swansong for the New Zealand round of the V8 Supercar championships at Pukekohe, I was fortunate enough to be taken on a hot lap.
I'm not a big chap but getting shoehorned into the passenger's seat was just the beginning. Next came the four-point
harness, reefed so tight it was difficult to breath.
Sitting there like a trussed turkey, the mechanic explained the G-forces involved would throw me around like a rag doll. Not a good idea as inside these stripped out racecars there's more metal bars than in a Paremoremo cell. Having already experienced the thrill of being rocketed around Pukekohe for the last time by a V8 Supercar driver, I was not at all bothered about having a more sedate first-time trip around New Zealand's newest track, the Hamilton400 street circuit, in the safety car.
The feedback from the drivers was "it's an interesting circuit and an exciting place to race".
After exiting the pit lane we accelerated down to turn two, the hairpin. The cars will be hard on the anchors on the approach and there's a change of surface through the corner that will make it difficult in the wet. It's slightly off-camber on the exit as the car straightens up for the short straight into turn three.
"This is a reasonably fast corner," said two-time World Touring champion Paul Radisich. "You've just got to make sure you don't clip the wall on the way out."
It seems very strange to approach a roundabout expecting to go left and all of a sudden the car's pitched right and then sweep left. Then it's off down the bumpy back straight only to be surprised by a snake chicane bang in the middle of the track (turn four).
"You can see it coming up," said Radisich. "And you go ahhh, oops - and suddenly you're on hard on the brakes about 50 metres out. If you clout the first kerb the car's very unsettled through the rest of it. Very spectacular as the cars will be off the ground and jumping around."
Turn five is a more conventional 90-degree right-hander with a hint of banking stopping the car from rolling off the crown. This is followed by a point-and-shoot straight where the cars will approach 200km/h before setting up for the open turn six.
"I never got a good run through here as there always seemed to be someone stuck in the wall," said Radisich. "It sucks you in and it's like real fast in and then whooooah, let's get back out of it and then it tightens up."
On the exit the cars will drift left towards the wall and they'll have to be careful because if they don't get it right they'll be buggered for the left-hand kink before the tight, seemingly decreasing radius right-hander that is turn seven.
The car now heads to the gentle left-hander before turn eight which is wide enough on the exit to park a battleship, here a driver can get on the gas early to barrel down the front straight reaching 250km/h before slamming the brakes on for the elbow at turn one.
