The Fast Show

You cannot go to a race track and not have a 911 around. Luckily for us, Porsche thought so too and sent a carrer a our way to help with proceedings.

- Debabrata Sarkar 

I've been doing this for a fairly long time, more than a dozen years now, and I’ve never driven a 911 of any sort. But I realised it’s been my own doing all along. I was never quite prepared to take a rear-wheel-drive sportscar out for a couple of laps or simply potter around town and be happy about it. I had always figured that if I were to ever do this, I would do so properly. Well, it cannot be done any more properly than this right here. A 911 Carrera with my name on it and a race track, in the middle of a diabolically hot Chennai summer afternoon with temperatures in excess of 40 degrees C.

If you haven’t caught the drift – this was going to be epic. In fact, when I walked onto the track, I spotted a colleague driving the Porsche around and wasn’t particularly amused. I promptly made my way to the car, snatched up the keys, cranked the motor and set off. After all, the cabin, though small, was a far nicer place to be in than standing around in the scorching sun. It was just as I had imagined. Fold yourself in half, enter bum first before tucking the rest of you in behind the steering wheel. Nicely bolstered seats, a steering wheel that feels just right, centre console with essential buttons and a meaty gear stick make you feel rather welcome in the cabin. There’s a certain sense of eagerness about the entire layout, you want to use the manual slider on the seat to get close to the steering and get a deeper connect with the car. There’s a certain level of anticipation that starts to build from the moment you get inside and strap yourself in with the bright red seatbelt.