There is a lime-green shape in my mirrors getting closer in big edits, and it must be the Stig in an Alpina B6. I had a feeling Stig would pick that car to drive first. Along with the Audi R8 V10, it's the newest thing here, and therefore the most interesting for the Stiglet's brain. I am driving a Ford GT — slowly by Stig standards, like a mewing pussy in someone else's expensive racing car — and am about to get out of the way of the Stig in a clean and gentlemanly fashion, because upsetting his concentration and blocking him when he's on a quick one would not be advisable.

We're on the main straight at Paul Ricard Circuit in France, on the approach to the chicane halfway along it. Stig's exit speed out of the kink leading onto this straight is phenomenal — he is gaining on me like I'm stuck in neutral. I ease off, give him the line into the chicane and note his braking point. Heinously late. Then he hurls the big lime car at the apexes, left, right, left, the Alpina's rear end twitching on entry, twitching on exit, and he's away up the next straight, hard on the gas and carrying more speed than I can fully understand. By god, he's fast. And he's only just started...

First, some explanation of what this FIA GT3 series championship is all about. You know what a Porsche 911 GT3 is, right? A stripped-out, lighter, meaner, more powerful, more track-focused 911. Well, that's what all of the cars you see on these pages are like, too. Near-standard spec road car engines, with minor stuff done to the exhausts and electronics, mated to sequential racing gearboxes, sitting in minorly tweaked chassis and bodywork, stripped out and sprinkled with the usual racing addenda, and bolted to the track with hard-looking aero in the form of some mighty rear wings and diffusers. They look good, sound good and go hard.

These are cars we know about, cars we can relate to and adore, and the racing versions make the same noises as the ones we see on the road. The list of marques is impressive: Ferrari (430 Scuderia), Aston Martin (DBRS9), Porsche (911 GT3), Lamborghini (Gallardo), Ford (GT), Corvette (Z06), Dodge (Viper), Alpina (B6), Ascari (KZ1R), Audi (R8 V10), Morgan (Aeromax) and Jaguar (XKRS).

That's 12, in case you weren't counting. And at the time of this writing, the total number of cars confirmed for the grid at Silverstone is 44 (six Ferraris, six Porsches, six Fords, four Astons, four Audis, four Alpinas, four Corvettes, two Vipers, two Morgans, two Jags, two Ascaris and two Lambos).

The two-day session we're attending at Ricard is known as a "balance of performance test." It's carried out by the SRO (Stéphane Ratel Organization, the series organizer) and the FIA (Federation Internationale de l'Automobile, motorsport's world governing body) and it does just that: keeps the performance of the cars as equal and balanced as possible. You might think this is impure and against the nature of the sport, but you'd be wrong. What it does is throw more emphasis on the drivers and teams to get the maximum out of their cars at each event, to set them up as best as possible and use whatever tactical advantages they can to eke out wins. And, of course, it keeps the racing close.

Balancing the cars' performance is no easy task. It is the job of two FIA-appointed drivers, Jean-Marc Gounon and Christophe Bouchut. Both are vastly experienced and talented GT drivers who know the cars well. They are also aware of any tricks the teams might pull to make the cars a little slower. This is a test in which, unofficially, the teams don't want their cars to go too quickly. But, outwardly at least, they're genuine and straightforward with the cars, and present them to the FIA ready to go and set up properly.

Another test takes place at Monteblanco, in Spain, which is more of a twisting circuit than Paul Ricard. Jaguar and Morgan weren't present at this event but will turn up in Spain with their XKRS and Aero 8, respectively. From there, the times and traces and even factors like tire wear are analyzed, and the numbers crunched by computer. Only then do the cars receive ballast penalties to equalize them.



There are other interesting ideas at work here, too, to keep the racing close. All drivers in the series are ranked gold, silver or bronze, depending on their past experience and current level of racing expertise. A gold driver is a top-notch semi-pro who is not considered a fully fledged works driver, but may have raced professionally in the past. A silver driver is one level down from that, perhaps a younger pilot wanting to break into higher echelons of the sport or an exceptionally good amateur. Finally, bronze are the gentleman drivers, wealthy amateurs who are there for the fun of it and may be funding the team.

A car can be run by a combination of either a gold and a bronze driver, or two silver drivers, but never two golds. Of course, all of these guys are quick, even the bronze-ranking drivers, but none of the cars will ever be driven by full-on demon professional heroes who will jump in and dominate: Audi won't be able to run Allan McNish, for instance.

There are two races per meeting, lasting an hour each. Last year's driver's championship was won by James Ruffler and Arnaud Peyroles in the Martini Callaway Corvette Z06-R, while the manufacturer's championship was claimed by Matech GT Racing in the Ford GT. We had a beady eye on the series as it progressed, and so it seems did others. Alpina and the might of Audi are now here for 2009, and the GT3s seem to have really come of age. If you can't relate to F1, and find touring cars are too slow, this is the series for you. None are full-works operations, of course, because that's not the way it works. However, the customers who buy these newest cars will surely be at the pointy end of the grid. The Audi especially looks quick...

... It is a great testimony to the openness and down-to-earth nature of the GT3 championship that the teams allowed us — one brilliant driver and onenumpty — to get behind the wheels of their precious cars. They just lined them up at the appropriate time and let us rip for a few laps. Only the stuck-up corporate behemoth that is Audi refused to let us have a go, annoyingly, for reasons that made no sense at all — something to do with it not being "fully developed." Rubbish. Maybe the first drive of the V10 GT3 had been promised to some German media or other, who knows? Maybe we'll drive it some other time. Or not. Stig sat in it for a while for the photos and his body language spelled frustration.

Still, there were plenty of other amazing machines to get to grips with...

The Ford GT GT3 is a fabulous car — no wonder it won the team championship last year. It is stable and solid and has plenty of grip at all speeds. Stig reckoned it's developing a good deal of downforce. The thing does feel jammed to the track. Engine power feels enormous initially, but I learned later that, by the standards of the other cars here, it probably isn't the fastest in a straight line. What it does have is sublime throttle feel, and it delivers its power and torque in a beautifully linear and predictable way. I loved this car instantly and didn't want to get out of it. It is so stable. The gearshift is extraordinary. You use the clutch for pulling away and for downshifts only. For upshifts, just leave your foot on the throttle and jam the lever toward you. It cuts the engine for a microsecond before engaging the next gear, with magical smoothness.

The Ferrari felt most like a road car, most familiar. I drove last year's F430 GT3 while Stig had a run in the new Scuderia. He was lining up to set the fastest time of the day when his Scud started to cough and nearly ran out of fuel. This annoyed Stig intensely, and he wondered whether the team had short-fueled him deliberately to stop him going fastest. The Ferrari, in 430 Scud form, is definitely the most rapid thing here, and also the easiest to drive. You sit up relatively high in a spacious cabin, and the paddle shifts on the wheel — no clutch, remember — make things pretty simple. It feels pointy at the front end, delicate and light, much more so than the solid-feeling Ford. It's more like a single-seater at turn-in, nose-led, and the brakes are the most powerful here. Stig, and every person in the pit lane, was convinced that this new Scuderia was the fastest thing here, maybe just a little bit quicker than the Audi. The team didn't have a dedicated driver present on the day, unlike Audi, so the Scud didn't set a scintillating time, but it was fastest in the hands of Gounon.

It's amazing how different in character these cars are. The Porsche was the only car I stalled. The Aston was the only car I spun. Those two were the most difficult to go quickly in and the most unforgiving. I called the Porsche "spikey" in my notes. It's not there to help you. It's a hard, steely, mechanical device that needs mastering. It makes probably the best noise from the inside of any of the cars, its shrill, high-revving flat-six a true masterwork.

The Aston is quite an animal, too — one that you really have to muscle around the track but that probably rewards you with great balance and pace once you've gotten comfortable in it. I never did, really, and a slight delay on the gearshift indicator meant that I went down one too many gears into the chicane and rotated. Numpty.

As Stig drove the Viper — I missed out, another small technical delay — I listened to him and the rest of the cars roar past and noted their sounds, then closed my eyes and tried to pick them. They all have distinctive and utterly awesome exhaust notes. The four that are most similar are the Corvette, Ascari, GT and Alpina, with their hard NASCAR-style V8 roars. The Alpina has a supercharger whistle, though, so that's easier to distinguish. The Viper, Gallardo and Audi V10s have a lovely, almost mellow midpitch howl, the Porsche a shrill bark that penetrates to the center of your head and the Ferrari an even higher-pitched yell again, while the big Aston V12 sits somewhere between the Ferrari and the V8s in tone and is perhaps the most stirring of them all. How 44 of them – 44! – will sound, screaming by in a big pack, will be revealed on May 2-3. Blood. Diary. Etc.



Stig reckoned the Viper had the potential to go fastest if the full fury of its 8.3-liter V10 was unleashed — it's heavily detuned in a GT3. But I was finding it difficult to concentrate on what he was saying because I was enraptured with the car I'd just tried, the Ascari, which felt totally natural to drive. It is the only one of these cars with a carbon-fiber chassis, and it shows. It is fabulously stiff torsionally, light, too, yet the suspension setup the guys were using was soft. The car was utterly fluid, riding the curbs as if they weren't there, and it became my favorite car to that point. Inside, the big old-shape BMW M5 5.0-liter V8 had a staccato thrum to it, almost like an easy-revving twin-cylinder motorbike. This car might steal the title this year. Watch it.

But the car I was looking forward to the most came at the very end of the day. Stig went out in it first, and I stood on the pitwall with an engineer and timed him. A 2.09 dead on his first flyer. Then a 2.08.5. Then a 2.08 dead, which was the fastest time up until that point. And then he came in early and gave three extra flying laps to me. Generous soul. It was the Corvette, of course, the driver's championship–winning car. Having seen countless Corvettes winning at Le Mans over the years, it had even more resonance than the Aston or Porsche.

It might not be the quickest in a straight line, nor the most agile, but everything seems to gel better than in the other cars. It was the racer I could best imagine doing a very long stint in, the polar opposite of the Porsche, because I felt it was on my side. Good visibility, good brakes and balance, easy throttle response and an enormous slug of torque down low, combined with some seriously fast and urgent revving. And the soundtrack? Well, try a YouTube search for "LG Motorsports Gigliotti Corvette C6 W Challenge 2007 Utah" and you'll get the idea.

... If I were to choose any of these cars to race, it would be the Corvette first, the Ascari second and the Ferrari third. Stig wouldn't race anything but the Ferrari, because it's the fastest. But that's Stig...

The Audi went out later in the day and beat Stig's Corvette lap time, but by that stage he'd left the circuit, wandering off in the direction of Plan d'Aups Sainte Baume, his appetite sated.