Another non-Elise day! My excuse this time is that the track in question, Willow Springs is in California in the US and light as it is, the Elise is still too heavy for hand luggage. Willow Springs International Raceway ("The fastest road in the west") is an open, sweeping track in the high desert north of Los Angeles and I'm here at the Ferrari-DeTomaso owner's club day to as a guest of Rod Bean, one of the resident instructors who has kindly offered to show me the ropes.

Finding your way around here is made easy due to the American habit of numbering rather than naming the turns (OK, some of them do have names but no-one seemed to use them). The lap starts logically enough - exit from the pit lane and immediately into Turn 1, a banked 90 degree left-hander. Keep left here on the first lap as you won't be up to full speed, then blend in with the racing line on the exit, moving not quite all the way to the right as you need to be back over to the left again for Turn 2. This is a 180 degree right hander, slightly uphill and best double apexed to make the most of the short straight to Turn 3, where the track turns sharply left and steeply uphill. Clip the apex and straight-line to the entry of Turn 4. This is the highest point of the track, so execute a nifty weight shift 90 degree right turn over the crest, late apex and head steeply back downhill towards Turn 5. The track bends right, still going downhill and now off-camber as you brake and turn sharply back left to line up for Turn 6, an open right over brow. Turn 7 is no more than a gentle sweep in the back straight, so keep your foot in and maximise speed into the long, featureless right hander than is Turn 8. This goes on for a long time, and can be taken flat so you you arrive fast & try to locate an entry point for turn 9, the final decreasing radius right hander. Late apex this and sweep onto the half-mile start/finish straight, moving gradually over to the right to line up for Turn 1 and the next lap.

First lap out in my borrowed Ford Mustang and it's definitely no Elise. The suspension and tyres are designed for not spilling your coffee on bumpy US freeways so it rolls and dives, the tyres make a lot of noise on the turns and the auto-transmission hunts up and down during corner entry and exit in a really unnerving manner. The steering also seems to be affected by the body roll so as I turn in, it rolls over and seems to turn in tighter, so I remove a little lock, it rolls back and turns out again...hmmm.

Fortunately Rod is here - first he takes me out in his RX7...amazing, especially when we catch the Ferrari F40. Left to my own devices I doubt I'd ever have believed how much speed could be carried into the long sweeping turns. I'm pleased to see the only car we don't seem to make any time on here is a Motorsport Elise. Rod also finds straights to accelerate on where I thought there were only turns. Then, when I thought I'd acclimatised we go for a ride in the Mustang. Here is where I start to worry as my brain doesn't believe it's possible to go this fast in this car without something falling off. Nothing does however, after a few laps, ( I think it was when he caught a Dodge Viper through Turn 8) I can see it's no use blaming the car and that I'll have to raise my game a bit.

So what to do? Well, in the words of Colin McRae "just drive a bit faster". More scientifically, first I need to find a visual reference for the long turns. Willow is slightly unnerving in that the tarmac is laid on top of the dry dusty desert so in most places it's actually higher that the surrounding land so you can't clearly see the outside edges of the road. This means you look really hard at the edges to make sure you're not going off, and completely forget about lining the car up for the apexes and exits. So, I try to look round the corner to where I'm going, not at the track where I am. Things start to fall into place and after a couple of laps I'm just lifting the throttle where I was braking, and concentrating on carrying speed. Rod's demonstration has given me much more confidence in the car so I can let it lean harder into corners. I'm also building up confidence in the hard braking areas (1, 3 and 5) and really enjoying turn 4. As mentioned above, this is a hard right with a crest between the classic entry and apex points, so to get a good exit line the trick is to use the brow to turn the car - go in as fast as you can and then come quickly off the power. The weight of the car shifts forward, the back goes light so turn now and it just rotates. Time this move right and as the car settles down again it will be pointing in exactly the right direction for a quick squirt of power down the hill. Needless to say this involves lots of tyre squealing and some deft steering but when it works it really works well.

The lap is shaping up well now - brake late into 1, use the banking to help turn-in. Flat/breathe throttle into 2, through first apex to centre of track then turn again and continuous full power curve through second apex, hold this line through into 3. Brake hard, clip apex and into 4 as above. Power downhill, smooth turn into 5, late apex again and if it goes right stay on power all the way through 6, 7 and 8 if you're brave. Natural exit from 8, brake lightly and track round the edge until the apex is visible then back on the power and stay there. The organisers allow overtaking by consent between 9 and 1 and also from 6 into 8, so it's important to take a good line into each of these or you won't have enough speed to safely pass before the next turn.

By the end of the day I'm starting to like the Mustang in an odd sort of way - going faster means the transmission mostly just stays in 'D for drive' (as opposed to 'R' for race?) and the freewheel effect is minimised. The suspension also seems to improve under load - it goes through the floaty phases and firms up again. Tyres are holding up reasonably, squealing a lot but not rolling over or scrubbing too badly. It's still horribly unstable under braking into turns 5 and 9 but that's only twice a lap and by now I'm having lots of fun chasing & catching bigger engined muscle cars as well as a few stray exotics. Taking the right line into Turns 2 and 8 really pays off and you can just reel in the less well informed driver.

Rod is a great teacher as well as driver, and talking to him during the day about car balance and control and how to make the best of the Mustang is really interesting - I hope I've learned some new tricks that I can apply when I next take the Elise out. All in all a great day - great track, splendid California weather in spite of forecast rain, and lots of friendly people.

Motorsport Elise in pit lane - the car I wanted to be driving!