Top Gear Live in the RS200

Sitting in the Manchester museum with the kids when my dad calls, “hi do you want to come down to the NEC and help out with Nigel and his RS200 tomorrow?”….. “he is doing something with Top Gear live”

Fast forward 24hr hours and I find out what helping out is…it is turning off the Anti-Lag once we are launched and into the run. I also help out with filling the thing with fuel and trying not to be too smug about hanging out with Sabine and the stig in the paddock. But disclaimers have been signed about that bit so on to the RS200, I can talk about that right?

Waiting to do our lap it sounds like an absolute bag of nails, Nigel has to keep it going with the throttle, things I don’t understand are toggled on and off, and I occasionally have to push a button he cannot reach. Open face helmets and the intercom is on – this is the real group b deal. Nigel is an old friend of my Dad by the way, he has three RS200s and has been invited because he is one of the few prepared to use his.

Then we are at the start line, a flag is draped on the bonnet, and some guy is giving us the count down. “3,2,1, GO” ….and I experience the full Group B delivery for the first time. I have driven his other one but it doesn’t go like this. 600bhp. Wooooaahh – we are rocket launched into the 1pm Top Gear Live show and straight into the lap. Quite surreal really, being fired into an amphitheatre of so many people in something that is so biblically fast. And the track has very little grip and the car is sliding everywhere, but the way it generates pull down the track is staggering, just completely magic.

The prolonged drift under power around the long bottom corner is mental then I think he has overcooked a right hander – the Elise would have been too far rotated there – but we power out and line up for the drift onto the final straight. I am now mind-driving and Nigel’s is clearly in sync, as the power goes on hard and we hammer through the final corner exactly how I thought and hoped it would be done i.e. sideways and at insane velocity.

Lap over and our time is ruined by a hairpin the car doesn’t have the steering lock or handbrake to get round but it doesn’t matter, group b is as magic and mental as you dream it would be, it’s a hero you can meet and as absurd as it sounds the RS (you can call it Sir) didn’t look that undrivable. You could never get bored riding a RS200. Never. And we hardly got out of first gear, imagine driving it through the woods at night at full speed… the ultimate.

Sebine from the ring taxi.