Cricket, obviously, is a monumentally dull spectator sport. And so is golf,
and so is snooker. But the dullest, most excruciating sport of them all —
and I’ll brook no argument on this — is the day-long motor race at Le Mans.
At four o’clock on the Saturday afternoon, a grid full of cars from companies
you’ve never heard of, and drivers whose names you can’t even pronounce, set
off on what in essence is a 24-hour economy run. And then it goes dark.
Now I’m sorry but how, in the name of Zeus’s butthole, can anyone with even a
tiny sliver of intelligence imagine that spectators will be interested in
watching a sport they can’t see? A pair of headlights is coming towards you
and then, after a short, deafening roar, they are replaced by a set of red
tail-lights whizzing off into the night. Was that a Courage that just went
by, driven by Alfonso Percolinno? And if so, was it winning or coming last?
There is no way on God’s earth of knowing.
All you do know is that the race, when it finishes at 4pm on the Sunday, will
be won by the team with the most money. And that, for the past few years,
has been Audi. Although, for marketing purposes, the car is not always
called an Audi. Sometimes they replace the four rings with a flying B and
call it a Bentley.
Frankly it would be easier, and quieter, if each team were asked to roll up
with a copy of its most recent bank statement. Then the champagne could be
given to the one with the most amount of noughts. That way we’d all be
spared the public relations-inspired test of a car’s fuel consumption, held
under the cover of darkness, half a country away from where 80% of the
spectators live.
There’s talk among the sport’s fans that things will improve when the field is
made up of proper road cars that everyone recognises. This, they say, is
already happening with Aston Martin entering a DB9, Chevrolet a Corvette,
Lamborghini a Murciélago, and Ferrari a 575.
Apparently if this new class becomes numerous and competitive enough the
one-off Audi-style prototypes will be banned and it will be the basis on
which all endurance racing is founded. That sounds great, but there are
still two problems. First, it will still go dark, so for a third of the race
we won’t see what’s going on. And second, the Italians will bend the rules
so hard they are as near as dammit broken.
In fact, it’s already happening. You see, the new class is supposed to be for
GT cars. That would be “grand tourers” like the Corvette, the DB9 and the
575. But what Maserati has done is go cap in hand to its sister company,
Ferrari, and take away all the components from an Enzo, which is no more a
GT car than my dog. From these it has made a racing car.
Of course the rules say that 25 road versions must be sold, but finding 25
people from a customer pool of 6 billion isn’t that hard. Even when the car
in question costs £520,000 and doesn’t even have a back window.
If I’d been running the governing body, I’d have smiled while they explained
how this car obeyed the letter of the law and then told them to get lost.
But I’m not running the governing body, so even though it’s racing on wooden
tyres it’s already out there winning races without breaking out of a canter.
More importantly, the 25 road cars have been sold, and last week I gave one of
them a damn good thrashing.
Yes, it has the same carbon fibre skeleton as an Enzo and the same 6 litre V12
engine. It has the same flappy paddle gearbox, too, and the same set of
controls for raising the nose to get over speed bumps, firming up the
dampers and altering the savagery of the gearbox change action. But because
it was conceived as a racing car, it needed better aerodynamics than the
Ferrari on which it’s based. So it’s a full 2ft longer than the already
bulky Enzo and a foot wider. The MC12, then, is absolutely bloody massive.
And because you can’t see anything out of the back, parking is jolly tricky.
But amazingly, driving it isn’t. You expect when you see that air intake on
the roof and those ludicrous overhangs that it’s going to be a full-on
racing machine, a fire-spitting bone breaker. And when you step inside to be
confronted with proper race harnesses instead of seatbelts, there is a sense
of “here we go”.
But the engine fires quietly, the gearbox slides into first, and the steering
is no heavier than a Nissan Micra’s. You can even remove the roof. The most
astonishing thing, though, is the ride. This car glides over bumps, the
suspension absorbing the roadworker Johnnies’ laziness without transferring
a single ripple to the cool blue interior with its Milanese fashion house
upholstery.
It’s weird. You climb into what looks like a racing car and yet it behaves
like a family saloon. I think I know why they’ve done this. It’s so they can
argue that it is a GT car, a comfortable long-distance cruiser with a boot.
And we’ll gloss over the fact the boot lid needs an Allen key and three
burly blokes to remove it.
I was still thinking along these lines when I first put my foot down. Oh. My.
God.
There’s none of the aural histrionics you might expect from a car that churns
out 623bhp. You just get a savage punch in your kidneys as the huge rev
counter explodes round the dial. Bang, you pull the right-hand paddle and in
a couple of milliseconds you have a new gear and a new kind of agony in your
spleen. In less than 4sec you are past 60mph and on your way to 205mph.
It goes like a train, this car, but the most impressive thing is that it also
feels like a train; one of those 180mph TGVs that whistle through France
while you sit in silence eating cheese.
Sadly, things aren’t quite so satisfactory in the corners. Where an Enzo is
flat and grippy, the MC12 wallows and understeers. And every time you go
near the throttle you’re told via a dash warning panel that the
traction-control system is keeping you out of the hedge. But hey, driving a
car like this with the traction control on is like eating boil-in-the-bag
food at the Wolseley. So you turn it off. And once again. Oh. My. God.
When the understeer comes, you give the throttle a tiny nudge to unstick the
back end and . . . whoa, it’s as though the rear wing has been hit with a
wrecking ball. Now you’ve got an armful of opposite lock and you know things
are about to get messy.
It takes practice, getting this car to power slide. In the same way that it
would take practice to get an aircraft carrier to power slide. But it is
possible. And it’s worth it, because then you feel the Enzo foundations. The
sense of total balance. That said, it’s not as good as an Enzo. It’s not as
savage or as exciting. And it’s not as fast. But they only made 399 Enzos,
so if you weren’t one of the lucky ones the MC12 might appear to be the next
best thing.
Yes, it is very, very quick and it will, if you concentrate, blow your mind
clean in half in the corners. But you’re always aware somehow that it’s a
big, ugly, cobbled-together con trick with no back window. And that for
couple of hundred grand less you could have a vastly superior Porsche
Carrera GT.
Sure, this car was built to win races. But I’m afraid it fails to win
something more important. My heart.
Vital statistics
Model Maserati MC12
Engine type V12, 5998cc
Power 623bhp @ 7500rpm
Torque 582 lb ft @ 5500rpm
Acceleration 0-62mph: 3.8sec
Top speed 205mph
Suspension double wishbone with pushrod
Fuel 12.3mpg (combined)
Price £515,000 (approx)
Verdict It will win races but not people's affection
Rating 3/5
