SEPANG, MALAYSIA — Leow Ju-Len attends the Michelin Pilot Sport Experience 2014, and finally achieves his boyhood dream of being a racing driver... but only for a day.

What’s this “Michelin Pilot Sport Experience” thing exactly?
It’s part tyre launch, part fantasy-come-true for all men who have ever sat in a pedal car making “Vroom! Vroom!” noises. Especially for those who still do.

How’s that?
For nine years now the event has seen Michelin bring a variety of racing cars to a track for ‘partners’ (meaning dealers and customers) and the media to pretend to be racing drivers for a day. This year’s MPSE was held over 22 days at the Sepang F1 Circuit, where 500 people from 16 countries got to play.

Cool! What racing cars were there for you to try?
Wait, wait, first the serious stuff. Michelin unveiled its new Pilot Sport Cup 2 at the event. It’s a street-legal but oh-so-racy tyre that Ferrari puts on its hardcore 458 Speciale.

On a Porsche 911 GT3 at the Jerez circuit in Spain, Michelin found it to be 1.8 seconds faster over five laps in the dry. It’s measurably quicker in the wet, too. Michelin says it lasts 50 percent longer on the track, as well. On the shoulder the compound is from the tyres used in the Porsche Carrera Cup, so it’s literally part-racing tyre

I’ll be sure to keep it in mind when my Ferrari needs new shoes. Oh wait, I don’t have one. So come on, what racing car did you drive? A McLaren? A Red Bull Formula One racer?
Er, no. Something a bit closer to home, actually. My day started with a Renault Clio Cup car, which is sort of a touring car racer.

Doing a racing season in one really sorts the men from the boys, because everyone taking part with you also drives the Clio Cup car. Winning in one is mostly down to skill and racecraft, then.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it doesn’t look very fast…
Prepare to stand corrected, then. Its road-legal cousin, the Clio RS, has a 200 horsepower turbo engine and gets rave reviews for its agility.

The Cup car, on the other hand, has a different exhaust and a modified engine computer, so it has 220bhp to play with. It’s stripped of flab, too, so it weighs just 1,000kg. Let it loose, and it scampers to 100km/h in just four seconds flat.

OK that’s pretty quick, but what’s it like on the track?
Super, duper sensitive. Not to mention super loud. The acceleration isn’t scarily fast, but the noise from the exhaust is ear-splitting as you sprint down the straights. What’s most intense about the Clio is its reflexes. It darts into corners the way a cobra pounces on a sleepy mouse, and the brakes bite with the same, sudden intensity.
It’s so sharp, in fact, that I’m ashamed to say I spun it off the track at Turn 13...

Loser! What’s your excuse?
Cold tyres? The Clio Cup was on full racing slicks, which don’t offer their full grip until warmed past 100 degrees Celsius. A good driver knows how to do that properly. But basically the instructor says I went off because I braked a bit too deep and just that bit too much into the corner. Which is a nice way of saying I had no talent.

Still, lesson learnt: some crazy boy racers dream of driving with racing slicks on the street, but they’re not road legal for good reason. You have to get heat into them, and they’re no good in the rain, besides.

So you proved your uselessness at driving a touring car. What else?
I did much better with the Citroën C2 Rally car, if you must know.


That thing? It looks like a toy!
Oi, show a little respect to a car with some proper rallying pedigree! The Citroën C2 S1600 might not be monstrously powerful… Okay there’s only 150bhp under the bonnet so it’s not powerful, period, but this car won the Junior World Rally Championship (JWRC) a buttload of times.

Nine-time World Rally Champion Sebastian Loeb got spotted by the Citroën factory team because of his relentless habit of winning in the C2 Rally. And current champ Sebastian Ogier got his start in the big leagues with a JWRC title in one, too. An impressive showing in the C2 Rally can lead to big things.

So, did you impress?
Erm, I didn’t spin, crash or roll over, so that’s a good thing. As a motorsports machine, the Citroën isn’t hugely powerful, but it has a nice, cammy engine that comes alive when you let it rev. And it’s an easy car to get along with, even in the mud. Come off the throttle as you turn the steering, and you can feel the front tyres bite into the soil, as if the C2 doesn’t understand the concept of slipperiness.

It’s pretty satisfying, like walking steadily down a muddy path in the right pair of hiking boots and having your friends all around you fall down because they're in loafers. Hilarious! Plus I learnt something interesting about rallying tyres.

Which is?
That Michelin derived run-flat tyres from them. All those tyres that let Mercedes owners drive to the workshop after a puncture instead of having to sweat out a tyre change under the sun? They have strong sidewalls that can support the weight of the car up to a certain speed. That idea came from rallying: Michelin’s tyres can support 3,000kg because rally cars jump through the air and land hard.

What’s that like?
Well, I didn’t do any flying through the air, sadly. Honestly I didn’t set the world of rallying on fire in the Citroën, but I did come away with newfound respect for knobbly mud-plugging tyres. By the way, did I mention I didn't spin, crash or roll over?

Pfft! Obviously you can’t spin off the road in a rally car because you s tart off the road to begin with...
True, but back on the circuit I got the chance to redeem myself in a Formula 4 car.

Formula 4? Is that like F1 in any way?
It’s like Primary School for a career in F1. It’s a relatively cheap graduation from go-karting. Apparently it costs around $165,000 to do a season in F4, whereas the next step up (Formula 3, naturally) can cost nearly six times as much in a place like Britain.

After F3 comes GP2, which is where most of today’s F1 grid was culled from.

Come to think of it, it does look a bit like a baby F1 car...
Exactly! The F4 car has 185 horsepower but it’s made of carbon fibre, so it weighs only 470kg. It has the same sort of claustrophobic environment, too. Basically you hunker down onto the floor and your legs disappear down the narrow tube that tapers to the nose of the car. From there, all you can see are the tops of the tyres.

Racing slicks again, of course?
Of course. Only this time I gave it one slow lap to warm them up. Not more spinning off into the gravel for this boy. After that I let the little F4 car do its thing, and the first thing I found out? The acceleration is good and punchy but nothing your average supercar can’t see off. But the cornering speed on warm slick tyres is breathtaking stuff. Just breathtaking.

How so?
It literally takes your breath away. The F4 car musters huge G-forces through the faster bends at Sepang, so you carry what feels like enormous speeds around corners and your neck is too busy holding your head upright to let air pass through your windpipe. Probably. I don’t know if downforce from the wings is responsible, or just huge grip from the tyres, but the F4 just feels painted to the tarmac. Meanwhile your brain is screaming at you to slow down, so it’s one hell of a rush.

Sounds like fun, but what were your laptimes?
No idea, because they weren’t foolish enough to give us the pressure of being timed by a stopwatch! I will say however that I had no trouble keeping up with a 420bhp Porsche Panamera S pace car, with Carrera Cup Asia driver Benjamin Rouget at the wheel.

Hang on a minute, there were pace cars?
Sadly, yes. Michelin might have wanted us to feel like racing drivers, but the flipside of that is obviously that participants weren’t professionals so they felt that a bit of pace policing was in order. There’s wisdom in that decision, I reckon. After all, not without reason was I a racing driver for only one day, instead of a full-time one...

[For more on the Michelin Pilot Sport Experience 2014, look out for CarBuyer Issue 225, out on newsstands late next week!]

MORE TO READ
Ferrari 458 Speciale at Fiorano — A Wet Dream
Ferrari 458 Speciale review
Renault Clio RS review