Silverstone offers drivers a joyride

During the first part of the lap you don't touch the brakes. David Coulthard said that most circuits force the drivers to change down three gears. Here, the first corner of each lap dictates that it should be approached at top speed. The prevailing wind is westerly, so quite often you have a tailwind down the pit straight, meaning that you arrive at Copse travelling at nearly 200mph. There is not a huge amount of run-off, but it is tarmac now, which is great, because if you make a mistake you can do a "wall of death" to regain the track after the corner. The only problem with this type of run-off area is that if your suspension fails and the car drops down on the ground, you can't slow down, and Northampton is the next stop.

Cars tend not to fail in those situations because it's as if they are in equilibrium. There is a lot of load as you turn in, but normally when a car fails, it's under braking. Or the throttle sticks open - it's a full-throttle corner anyway, so no real drama, you can just about get away with it, although it doesn't pay to think too much about the wall around the outside.

I have driven two F1 cars here this year, the Super Aguri and the Williams. In the Super Aguri I couldn't quite see the corner properly. It's rather grey down there and the apex is hidden behind the pit wall and the barrier. So you're looking at the left-hand side for a reference point, away from the corner, and you turn in with a blind faith that it's going to be there. Of course it hasn't moved since the last lap, but your precision has to be very fine. Even then, when you start turning in, it's not that apparent because you've got a small kerb, the track, a bit of concrete rumble strip, a bit of astro grass and then a lot more grey tarmac.

Afterwards I went to have my eyes lasered because I realised they weren't as good as they used to be. I drove the Williams three months later and loved it, picking up plenty of time there. But it was still difficult and you need to be inch-perfect on the turn-in. Your head wants to keep the throttle planted and your heart doesn't - it's like there's a little muscle connecting your heart to the back of your right calf that lifts the throttle. You can't have a car that slides through at Copse. It's not about hustling and hanging on to a big oversteer, it's about precision and a balanced car.

Then you head down to Maggotts/ Becketts, approaching the little left kink of Maggots flat out, just enough to get some weight distribution change before flicking into the first part of Becketts. It defies belief. Into Becketts, you go flat out at 180mph. Usually that same westerly wind is now on your nose, so you turn in and pick up even more downforce because of the wind direction. If you get it wrong, the car will spin around and slam into the tyre barrier. You get to a point of no return and are guaranteed to have a massive accident.

When I drove the Williams, I was about three seconds off the pace and nearly all of it was in the first two corners, just believing that the car would stick. And it takes a while to come to terms with the fact that it's physically possible to turn a car in at that angle at that speed, with your foot nailed to the floor.

Physically, it takes it out of you too. On the in-car camera I can clearly be heard grunting and groaning all the way round the lap. The steering loads are not that high, because there's a lot of power assist, but your lungs and other organs moving around within their cavities at five times their normal weight has an effect.

There is no time to dwell on that, because it's on to the middle part of Becketts. What they're doing now is just lifting the throttle, and there's enough drag from that - more than 1G - to dip your head forwards. Talking to Sir Stirling Moss, he made the point that you get more deceleration from lifting off in these cars than he used to get full on the brakes in his day.

So you lift the throttle for the left and pull down two gears, about 120mph, and you have to hook the kerb on the left-hand side. In the Super Aguri the track was damp through here. I saw puffs of spray looking almost like steam coming off the tyres and still the car didn't move. Extraordinary.

The following right is frustrating. You pull down one more gear to fourth and kiss the kerb, at which point the car always understeers wide. It's a very important corner, taken at about 100mph, which feeds you into the left of Chapel, which is a nothing corner, only just a kink, but determines your speed on to Hangar Straight. I think this is one of the most evocative places in the world. Whenever I was testing here, we'd go out of the pit lane at 10am, and turning into Hangar Straight for the start of a day's work was the most magnificent feeling.

You cross to the other side to get ready for the right-hand Stowe. On the straight you hit about 195mph and the car hits the ground - hard. In the beginning it hurts and knocks the air out your lungs, but five laps in you get used to it. Connecting with the ground is a skid and a whack, and because you're sitting on the floor it transfers straight up your spine.

Stowe seems to be in your peripheral right-hand vision before you think about slowing down. You lift, brake, click down two gears and turn in. The back end slides, still doing about 135mph. You apex nearly at the end of the corner, almost as if you have missed it, before sweeping in.

Now you're flat out in fifth gear and riding the kerb. If you run wide, it's too late, there's nothing you can do about it. Providing you ride up that kerb and back down, you know you're safe. What staggered me was that the Williams hit seventh gear before Vale. When you watch on TV it looks like a little rise, but, sitting on the floor of the car, it's just a horizon and you can't see the corner. Because you're braking only about 80 yards before the corner, you nearly run out of time to pull the necessary five downshifts.

There are three levels of nastiness on the kerb on the way in. There's a serrated kerb, and you can use some of that, which will pull the car around nicely. But use too much of it and you can graze and damage the underside. Then it will kick you into an oversteer, which is the last thing you need. As soon as you've got the car over the kerb, you pick up the throttle into Club itself. Club you can do one of two ways. It's an acceleration zone, taking either the shorter inside route with reduced throttle, or you can skim around the outside, where you get less traction control effect, building up more speed, but it's a longer distance. There's nothing in it.

Now you're climbing uphill. It's easy to think of Silverstone as flat, but it is quite a climb up to Abbey. Why does that matter? Because you can brake even later into the incline. From 185mph you come down five gears and turn. As soon as you feel the car going in, you nail the throttle because there's tremendous grip on the way out. It's the best rollercoaster ever.

At first you can't see Bridge corner as you approach it because the vehicle bridge blocks the view, but the corner is banked and fantastically fast. You immediately have to get back to the right-hand side for the first part of the complex, which is the least satisfying part of the track. There's an entry to a support-race pit lane there as you approach Priory. It's off the racetrack, really, but to me it feels absolutely correct to be right over there.

Then you can thrash through Priory because you can take a lot of kerb, maybe even some grass, on the inside. It's 100mph, fifth gear. This is a corner that always seems to surprise you by showing up early. You can accelerate hard as you come into the stadium area with fans all around you.

Heavy braking for Brooklands follows. This is a curious corner, very slippery. It's where the Club circuit and GP circuit join, so it tends to have varying grip, so you go in really early. It has a kerb with some little concrete kerbstones, which are unpleasant.

You drive through it, then finish turning after the apex because at Luffield - one of the most frustrating corners in grand prix racing before you go on to one of the best, Copse - you launch into it. As soon as you arrive you turn in, and then you sit there and wait for the thing to stop sliding and wheelspinning. It seems an eternity before you can get back on the throttle, at which point there is bundles of grip and you can go very wide, on to the exit kerbs, even on to the grass. Unless it's wet.

Then you go flicking through Woodcote. To watch an F1 car accelerate as it disappears from Luffield through Woodcote is mind-blowing. In the wet you have to be careful through here. The bollards on the right and the starting grid lines give you a strobe effect as you come on to the pit straight. The pit wall is high, making it difficult to look up to your pit board to get information. Steering wheel again.

You can overtake into Stowe and into Abbey. If you're quick out of Priory, you can overtake into Brook-lands.

It's an adrenaline-filled lap and one of the biggest thrills that an F1 driver experiences.