But now the feeling of being shut in is totally different from what I knew in a Formula 1 car. There are two main reasons for that. The first is that I have a roof over my head. The second is that it’s pitch dark outside. For the first time since 1999 I am back in a sports car. No ordinary sports car, either: this is the Porsche 919 Hybrid, a radical sports prototype for the 21st century – but still a sports car with an enclosed cockpit. Right now it’s night-time in Portugal, in the European mid-winter. At the Portimão track in the Algarve, on the first of two days’ testing, I am experiencing my first few laps in the Porsche 919. I’m a little uneasy at first: have I made the right decision in quitting F1 and coming back to sports cars? But I feel fantastic as well: I love driving at night in these cars. The headlights knife through the darkness; in the cockpit the atmosphere is unbelievable, with the glow from the instruments, the sense of being cocooned at the centre of things.
