Willoughby Track nights!

to rearrange my schedule to attend and there is no searing midday heat to deal with or the low sun in your eyes on sunset, plus the cars like the cooler night temperatures.

The great race circuits of the world each have a famous corner, the Nürburgring has the Carousel, Spa has Eau Rouge and for Sydney Motorsport Park it's Turn One.

Many don't realise how fast a corner it is, it’s one of the fastest corners on the Australian scene. With a late turn in and a late apex towards the end of the mid corner ripple strip, problems occur when a driver turns in early and is then forced to come off the throttle mid corner. You don’t have to look far to find a story of someone getting it wrong. It’s a corner you’ve got to build up to and bending our instructor's ear is recommended to get you through without incident.

The sessions are 15 minutes long and with our tyre pressures checked by PCW Technician Craig Chivers we all ventured out to bed in the mind and vehicle to track noise, sounds and speeds.

For me a circuit is like a puzzle, I attack each section with advice from the instructor and slowly put a lap together, our last session is when it all clicked.

We had twenty minutes in our final session which was worth sticking around for, I found some clear air to wear a groove into the SMSP tarmac. By the time the faster GT cars caught up, we had a lap all pushing the cars hard together, comradery was high as we rolled back into the pits and I felt like I moved up a few rungs on the driver ladder.