Why I love...KARTING

Five seconds after climbing into a kart, I am entirely comfortable. My gloved hands find the steering wheel rim, my feet rest easily against the pedals and I am contented.

- MATT PRIOR

Five seconds after actually driving off, things are different: the vibration makes me feel sick and my glasses shake so much that my vision is blurred. It's loud, it's uncomfortable and I have no idea how I’m going to cope with half an hour of steering this heavy.

I've been karting on and off (mostly off) for nearly 40 years, sometimes in a rented kart, sometimes in my own one. But if the gap between stints has been anything more than a few months, I find the physicality of driving them takes serious reacquaintance.

No car, not a supercar nor a Caterham, drives like a kart, no matter how much a Mini Cooper's drive mode suggests it does.