VOLKSWAGEN GOLF R

Track day gives us a chance to test hot hatch's high-performance credentials

- Richard Ingram

MANY people consider the humble hot hatch to be a jack of all trades. Something that can do the school run or hop to the shops, before transforming into a scintillating sports car the moment the road opens up.

But to find out if the latest Volkswagen Golf R is the consummate single-car solution, I subjected it to the ultimate test: a track day. And no ordinary track day either; my plan was to join my colleagues at evo magazine for their last organised session of the season - around the Goodwood Motor Circuit in West Sussex.

I'm lucky that in this job, I've driven on lots of race tracks, but I was worried that the Golf would feel out of its depth - and that's before you consider that most of the other drivers knew their cars inside out; I'd only had the VW for a month or so at the time.

The sessions were divided into 15-minute slots, and there was no telling what you'd be jostling for track space with until you rolled into the pit lane. My first run saw me sitting with an Alpine A110, a Porsche Cayman GT4, a current-generation Honda Civic Type R, a BMW M3 Touring and a Nissan R35 GT-R.