AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT

BAC is taking the Mono racing with the ultra-lightweight Mono Cup – and a road-legal version will follow. We test the Cup on track at Austria's Red Bull Ring

- by JAMES TAYLOR PHOTOGRAPHY by RICH PEARCE

IM TRYING TO CONCENTRATE ON THE TRACK AHEAD. Two things are making this tricky. Firstly, the view all around is distractingly stunning. The Red Bull Ring is nestled in the Styrian Alps, at an altitude where clouds hang so low you feel like you could reach out and touch them. When patches of sunlight hit the hills, the forests and mountain peaks are illuminated in vivid greens, blues and purples. And the BAC Mono Cup a car with no roof, no windscreen and a widescreen all-round view - puts you in that landscape more emphatically than most cars can.

The other reason I'm finding it a tad difficult to focus is that the Mono Cup is also about as intense as cars get. The buzzing vibration, freeze-frame braking performance and the sheer corner speed that it's capable of are in a realm most other cars most other vehicles in general - can't get close to. It takes a little mental recalibration.

While I find my feet, let's cut-scene away from the cockpit and get up to speed on what exactly the BAC Mono Cup is. Since the Mono was first introduced to the world in 2011, its creators (brothers Ian and Neill Briggs, BAC standing for Briggs Automotive Company) have been interested in taking it racing. 'It's something we've always wanted to do,' says Ian Briggs as he introduces me to the car in the Red Bull Ring pit garages. As he explains, the Mono has always been built to motorsport standards in terms of safety and performance. Its steel safety cell and rollover structure fit racing safety standards, its gearbox is a derivation of a Formula 3 transmission, and its lap times in standard form are already competitive with bespoke racing cars. As a sort of unique blend between an open-wheel single-seater and a closed-wheel sports car, however, the regular Mono doesn't quite fit into an existing formula.