Some years ago my mother said, apropos of nothing in particular: “Victoria, you can’t cook, you don’t iron and you don’t sew. What have you to offer?” I thought about it for a moment and replied: “I can get a car to go sideways at 80mph.”

And it’s true. I might not be much good at housework but over the years I’ve raced everything from a combine harvester to a Maserati. I’ve driven my heart out in a Porsche, a Ginetta, a Renault and a Caterham. I’ve gone rallying in a Peugeot, banger racing in a Rolls-Royce, and been flat out in a Citroën 2CV for 24 hours.

It is an addiction that I have had since childhood. I think I can trace it to an occasion when I was about seven, sitting in the back of a Peugeot 205 driven by my dad on a winter’s day. With such a precious cargo on board, Dad drove gingerly round an icy left-hander but couldn’t stop the rear end sliding out to the right. It was my first experience of sliding in a car and I loved it. “Do it again, Daddy, do it again,” I demanded.

That was just the start. When I was 10 my dad — who was a successful racing driver in his time — welded an old kart chassis together with a lawnmower engine for me to buzz around the farm on. It was fun but I wanted more power and within six months I had taken to “borrowing” his BMW and taking it off road over his cornfields.

Today I suppose parents might get their hyperactive daughter tested for some sort of disorder, or nominate them for an Asbo. My dad booked me in for lessons in Formula One for kids, otherwise known as kart racing.

And so began an adolescence that revolved around cars and racetracks. Every Sunday morning at some ungodly hour the B-H clan would pile into karting’s must-have accessory, a Volkswagen van (ours was red, the fastest colour), where we would sit alongside tyres, wheels, engines, helmets and karts for hours until we reached our destination — usually a track in the middle of nowhere with a biting Arctic wind.

Then, for the next few hours Dad would join all the other fathers pushing, pulling, lifting and fiddling just to keep their own little wannabe Nigel Mansells and James Hunts on the circuit. The mothers would sit in their respective VWs doing everything to keep their minds off the fact that motor sport is a) dangerous and b) expensive.

They were probably also wondering why the hell they hadn’t married a man whose danger level peaked at getting out of bed. In my mother’s case she probably should have known that marrying a racing driver called Guy Butler-Henderson (initials: GBH) was unlikely to be an easy ride.

Amid the occasional tears and tantrums — usually from disappointment rather than the inevitable grazing and gravel rash — and lots of laughter I learnt to love racing.

Today I can’t let 24 hours go by without slithering my way out of a T-junction. Actually, I can’t get behind any wheel without burying the throttle and using all the revs in every gear, no matter if it’s a 4x4, a people carrier, an automatic or a diesel.

But despite this and the fact that I have been submerged in motor sport for more than 20 years there’s one manufacturer that’s slipped beneath my radar: Ferrari. Ferrari is the most evocative name in motor sport and it pains me that I have never driven one in anger.

Other marques no doubt have their own attractions and heritage but there remains something about Ferrari that is special. No other car maker conjures quite the kudos and romance of Italy’s finest and at the back of every driver’s mind — no matter at what level they compete — there is the sure knowledge that without a blat around a track behind the wheel of a Ferrari their career is somehow incomplete.

So it was with the sense that all my previous driving experiences — from cornfields to karting (where I was once lapped by a young hopeful called David Coulthard) — had been building to the moment I found myself standing trackside in Italy beside an F430 Challenge race car.

This is no ordinary Ferrari. It is a stripped down no-nonsense track-day beast designed for people who think the roadgoing F430 isn’t as fast or as expensive as it could be. Just over 100 are being built and most will race in the snappily titled Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli 2006.

This is a “gentleman’s” racing series catering to wealthy petrolheads and is about as far removed from the kart racing days of my youth as it is possible to get. For £175,000 you not only get the keys to the car but you also get access to the facilities of the most motor-sport-focused manufacturer in the world, who can turn a nobody into a racing driver.

It sounds a lot of money, and it is, but then being able to tell people you race a Ferrari is on a par, for men at least, with saying that last night Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie popped round for a few beers and a pillow fight. I doubt even those two would leave you as hot and as breathless as the 430 Challenge left me after a couple of laps of Ferrari’s Fiorano test track.

Ferrari’s engineers have been to work on the car to boost performance and reduce weight so that the Challenge slashes 8sec off the road version’s lap time. The glass has been turned into plastic, metal into carbon fibre, and leather into cloth to save precious ounces. As for creature comforts, well, put it this way: if you want air-conditioning you open the window, and if you want to increase the car’s sound system you press the loud pedal.

The suspension, too, is stiffer and the car sits lower to the ground than the street-legal motor, while the state-of-the-art electronic differential has been replaced by a more traditional bomb-proof mechanical one, which is rewarding for the racers. With the traction control off and the best part of 500bhp on tap, I was in car heaven.

Around the bends it grips the tarmac like Marmite on your favourite shirt. There’s no body roll, no spinning inside wheel, just a big helping of power that thrusts you from one corner and throws you into the next.

You’re forced to concentrate hard on counteracting the g-force that pushes you back into the bucket seat, and your ears never get a second’s peace — the engine’s either growling as you accelerate up the rev range, or it’s snarling each time you change down the gears. The only place for the built-up heat to filter away is through your fireproof overalls and helmet-clad head.

The car is fully kitted with F1-derived technology. There are the steering-mounted gearchange paddles (left changes down and right changes up) that don’t require you to waste precious seconds taking your foot off the throttle — you just flip up and down at will and the clever F1 transmission does the rest.

The brakes are made from carbon ceramic material (known as CCM) that are available as a £10,450 option on the road car. They are unremarkable around town but on the track, where they warm up quickly, they offer more feel, stronger stopping power and never seem to fade.

Later, as I burbled back into the garage, I could easily imagine how thrilling it would be to race one of these most exclusive F430s with dozens of others on the same bit of track. And although the Ferrari Challenge Trofeo is not the cheapest way to go motor racing, it is the best place to go to buy into the ultimate Ferrari lifestyle. And to many, that bit is priceless.

In fact, now that my dad’s bank balance has recovered from my early days on the kart circuit I think it might be time for him to join me and get involved. After all, it was him who started this whole racing thing in the first place.