The best car I’ve ever driven and it’s not even close. I’m still buzzing. I can’t believe I got to drive this thing.
It might have been your typical Taupo track day but for 17 of us it was much more special than that. Having been offered the opportunity to have a go in a Juno Sports Prototype Race Car I jumped at the chance. How often does an opportunity like that come up? So I paid up and headed to Taupo in the Bumble Beemer, entering that in the track day to make the trip more worth it than just doing one session.
Before getting in the car we of course had to sign a waiver saying among other things that if we crash it we buy it. With a 70k+ number presented to me I signed away knowing full well I don’t have even a tenth of that should they come looking. I was confident signing knowing no one else would hit me on a track day and knowing that Taupo with it’s wide open run off areas wasn’t a place I was worried about hitting a wall.
Then I got to get in the car. I listened intently as I got instructions on how to drive it. I’d never driven anything like so was worried I would struggle or muck something up. Once I got going though I felt right at home. The paddle shifts were so satisfying. Smacking through gears coming naturally after all my sim racing experience. The one surprising part being the way my helmet would getting pulled upwards by the air flowing through as I got faster. Open top being something completely new to me. The speed was awesome and the speed through corners due to the aero was unreal. I kept going faster and faster seeing how much it could take with the widest smile on my face the entire time.
Getting out of the car the engineer talked to me saying I was driving well and looked fast, a few more sessions and I might be on the pace of the regulars. He also told me off for not cooling the brakes enough on the in lap but I was just too excited to be driving the Juno (and wasn’t sure if I had one more lap left).
As a bonus I also swapped cars with another 2kcup driver for one session. It was so cool getting to drive an MX5 but somehow this didn’t feel natural the way the Juno did.
