The season ended for me in a hotel car park in Georgia, USA. Ten minutes up the road was Road Atlanta, one of the world’s finest race circuits, like a faster and scarier version of the long circuit at Brands. The point of being there was the IMSA Lites - introduced at the beginning of this year to train teams and drivers for the American Le Mans Series and featuring open top sports prototypes built by Panoz, West and Radical. These cars are quick, really really quick, with F3 power output but a lot less drag. Pole time at Atlanta was just 2.5 seconds shy of the LMP2 Lolas, and up with the GT1 and GT2 Porsches and Ferraris. Really bloody quick.

The track in Georgia is super fast, full of blind crests and fast corners. It’s breathless; the only chance to relax is along the mile long back straight but even that has a flat out kink with a blind crest on it. At one point very near the end of the lap you head up over yet another blind crest and on this one the car actually flies briefly. On the other side of the crest you are presented with a daunting (just) flat out right hand turn bordered by an unprotected concrete wall. At this point, during qualifying the 177bhp Suzuki engined Panoz DP04 I was driving had an inconsistent tendency to snap oversteer, very worrying indeed - however when I reported this to the team they put it down to poor driving.

The plan had been to have a day testing then go into practice and qualifying with some idea of what direction the track points in. Due to a broken down truck the team did not arrive until it was too late to get any running in. The frustrating thing was that for the whole day, the car I was to drive had been sat on the tail lift of the works’ truck and in the end I had to go and get it myself. The following day I had to go into practice without any idea of which direction the track pointed in or even what all the switches in the car were for. I ran around for the session trying to get my bearings but also keeping my eye on the mirrors looking for the faster Mazda engined Panoz DP02’s, which every now and again would fill my mirrors.

I managed a lap of 1 min 47 secs, way off the midfield pace where the works DP04 was running (at 1 min 35 secs). After some soul searching I decided to drive the qualifying session with a bit more gusto. That session was going much better, I found another seven seconds easily and was running a very fast lap when that oh so scary snap oversteer started to appear. On a couple of quick laps I had grassy moments, just running out of road as I kept the car from spinning. I still felt I could find at least another four maybe five seconds, which would have put me on a similar pace to the works car. I never got the chance as the session was red flagged when it seemed that the Radical teams had hit all of their self destruct buttons – I counted five of the things sitting by the side of the track along with a Panoz and a West. I clocked a DP02 interrupted lap of 1 min 40 secs in this session.

I reported the oversteer issue to the team who then said that they felt I wasn’t up to driving the car, but added if I had tested they too thought that I would have had the measure of the works DP04. They shipped in one of their hotshot young FF2000 drivers who knew both the car and the track to do the race. Interestingly he managed a lap of 1 min 35 secs after about three laps but then came into the pits to complain about the snap oversteer. The team cranked on a load more rear wing and sent him out again. He did two laps then parked it complaining that it was undriveable, making my performance much less concerning – I also think that the team changed the gear ratios as the car was topping out in 6^th at some points when I was driving (a rather worrying speed, about 145 – 155mph by all accounts – one team claim 165mph).

Watching the Le Mans Audis, Aston Martins and Corvettes along with the fantastic Porsche 9R6 Spyders LMP’s take to the track just after our session was incredible. I could gauge my lap times against the Le Mans winning car, (30 seconds off for the record!).

I’m very tempted to return to do Petit Le Mans next year in Lites, though I’ll certainly be driving with another team, most likely the works West squad who made the nicest burger I tasted the whole time I was in the States.

Burgers are the staple diet in the USA, and yes they are huge! I ate so many that I completely lost my appetite. It’s just not good food. The other thing I didn’t like were the guns, which are apparently easier to buy than beer. If someone tries to carjack you in Georgia you are within your rights to shoot the criminal – not a nice thought that the guy next to you could have a 9mm in the glovebox. However what Americans do well though is motorsport, pretty much at any given time there’s motor racing on TV on at least one channel. That I do like!

Anyway aside from a few passenger seat rides on PCTs in Suze’s Micra that’s the season done for me. But I’m gonna have a good 2007 – I have a plan.