RAW | join me onboard the ferocious Sauber C9 Mercedes for a few laps of testing at Donington Park

Just stumbled across this footage on my laptop from a shakedown test at Donington Park back in 2021 in one of my all-time dream race cars, the sensational Sauber Mercedes C9 Group C Le Mans car, at that time recently restored by MotoHistorics in the UK, an exceptional historic race preparer. Public test days at Donington are open to all and any race cars and licence holders, so sything between Radicals, Ford Ka's and Porsche GTs certainly kept my attention! Overall I remember just being blown away by the performance of the car: so much raw power and extremely competent handling for its age - similar in so many ways to contemporary Le Mans prototypes, but of course lacking the driver aids we take for granted nowadays such as traction control, paddle-shift and power steering. This leaves the driver with a LOT to manage and it was thirsty work for sure, with my neck in particular struggling towards the end of the day. Some of you will notice that I'm not super- consistent with my gear selection or apexes or lines and so on - sometimes these are just small mistakes, the kind that are easy to make when you're dialling into an unfamilar car for the first time, others are deliberate mini-experiments just to help me learn what the car likes and responds favourably to. Towards the end of the run I get a clear lap or two, without any traffic to navigate and you can see how the car just LOVES being let off its leash. Softer braking, higher apex speeds, smoother steering input... all unlock an even higher performance window where the car seems to just inhale the road ahead. I hope you enjoy watching this as much as I enjoyed recording it:)

A Ford Ka! 03:17
It's busy out there: 04:01
Fastest lap of the run starts at: 05:48