15 Sep 05
I always thought that I had a pretty good idea about what 'tired' meant. I've run a marathon, seen two children through infancy and spent eight years working on a weekly magazine. But now I know: I've never been tired in my life. Not until last weekend.
Last weekend, I finally checked a box that had been waiting for a tick ever since I watched the Jaguars win at Le Mans in 1988. One day, somehow, I would do a 24-hour race. Quite how I was going to do this remained unclear until a few weeks ago.
One way would have been to rent a drive in the annual twice-around-the-clock dash exclusive to Citroen 2CVs, but I didn't want to fulfil an ambition 17 years in the making by crawling round in circles in an inverted pram, while an acute lack of funds and talent meant I'd never do Le Mans itself.
Then Mazda rang. There was to be a serious 24-hour race at Silverstone, the first in Britain for over ten years (2CVs aside), they were fielding three RX-8s in the Production class and would I like to help drive one? I thought about giving an appropriately professional pause before replying, but the words wouldn't stop. Somewhere in the undignified gabbling that followed, I must have managed at least one 'yes' because, at seven o'clock last Saturday night, two hours after the start, I found myself standing in the pit lane waiting to take over 'my' RX-8 for its second stint of the race.
