Video: Aston Martin's DBR9 is so loud that it hurts

More than anything else, it is the noise of Aston Martin’s DBR9 Le Mans car that makes you want to run away and hide. When they fire it up in the pit garage, even with its 6 litre V12 engine at idle, you feel engulfed by a solid wall of sound. It’s so loud it hurts. And they want me to drive this thing?

It may look like a DB9 road car and its name may differ by just one letter, but the DBR9 racer has little in common with anything you’d find on the public road. The rules under which it races mean it has to use the same engine block and cylinder head castings as the road car, and some components of its chassis are shared by both, but that’s as far as it goes. It’s not even built by Aston Martin.

That honour goes to Prodrive, a company that has won more than 100 world rallies since its birth in 1984 and will enter Formula One in its own right next year. David Richards, its chairman, recently headed the consortium that bought a majority holding in Aston Martin from Ford.

In a surgically clean workshop, each DBR9 is lovingly hand constructed, built up bit by bit around a massive steel roll-cage. The roof is made from aluminium but all other body panels are made from superlight, super-strong carbon fibre. The engine is lowered and pushed back as far towards the middle of the car as possible, while a racing six-speed sequential gearbox sits between the rear wheels.

The rules of Le Mans say the engine has to breathe through air restrictors but it is still said to have “approximately 600bhp”. Aston Martin will not be any more precise than that because it doesn’t want to share its secrets with the world, but my suspicion is that it’s rather more even than that. If you removed the restrictors, achieving more than 800bhp would be easy.

You might now be wondering what all the fuss is about. There are a few road cars built today boasting outputs of 600bhp or more. The difference is that the Aston does this while weighing 1100kg, which is rather less than the cheapest, lightest Volkswagen Polo. So view its performance potential from the only perspective that counts – its power to weight ratio – and you’ll see that it’s a demon.

“You’ll get used to the acceleration quite quickly; it’s the braking and cornering you might find hard to understand at first.” The words come from Darren Turner, F1 test driver for McLaren and one of the DBR9’s most successful drivers. Seeing me turn a pale shade of green he adds: “But don’t worry, it’s really a very nice car to drive. No vices and pretty predictable really.”

I notice someone has kindly put my name on the side of the car to make me feel like part of the team, but as I wedge myself into cramped confines designed for jockey-sized professionals like Turner, I feel as far from my natural environment as a fish in a nightclub. True, I do a fair bit of racing, but nothing like this. Worse, I’ve just been told the gearbox works only if you change up at maximum revs in every gear. You don’t even lift your foot off the accelerator. Therefore, I deduce, it is not possible to drive the DBR9 slowly.

There are lights and buttons everywhere and I have not the smallest clue what any of them does. There are three pedals at my feet which I recognise, but you use the clutch only to get rolling from rest. There are no dials as such and not even a rev counter. A little parade of lights come on as the revs build, and when the last one lights up you change gear.

With no more excuses left, I hit the button that says start. Even through a helmet, a balaclava and earplugs, it still makes my inner ear fizz. A voice crackles into life through my helmet radio: “Okay Andrew, in your own time. The tyres have been in the warmers so don’t worry about them. Just enjoy yourself.”

No “look after our car”, no “remember it’s worth half a million quid”, or “we need this for Le Mans”. Just “enjoy yourself”. So I ease out onto the Paul Ricard circuit – Bernie Ecclestone’s private test track in the south of France – and go to work.

And Turner is right. Paul Ricard has one of the longest straights of any purpose-built tracks in the world, enough for the DBR9 to stretch its legs up to about 190mph, but I realise on lap one that its savage acceleration is the least of my problems. Indeed, I can mash a throttle to the floor and tug a gearlever as well as the next man. It’s stopping for, and then getting round, the corners that simply does not compute.

The massive carbon brakes are so strong that the first time you stamp on them just before a corner the car all but stops so you end up going around the turn at about the same speed you would on a bicycle.

Then, when you start getting used to the brakes, you need to try to understand that the mechanical grip of the huge slick tyres and the aerodynamic downforce created by its wings and vast rear diffuser is so great it will generate between 2G and 3G of cornering force.

There are few road cars that will generate even 1G when cornering.

And, most worrying of all, the faster you go through a corner the more downforce the car generates and the better it feels. Clearly there comes a time when this principle reverses itself and the car flies off into the Mediterranean, but with Dr Ulrich Bez, the Aston chairman, waiting in the pits to take his turn to drive the DBR9 for the first time, I thought I’d better not test it to its limits.

So I contented myself with hurtling around the track as fast as I could while taking no risks. And, to my great surprise, I discovered I was no longer intimidated by this monstrous motor car. Every time I shot past the pits, I prayed there would not be a man holding a board telling me to come in. And every time I saw only relaxed faces on the pit wall, my heart leapt at the thought of one more lap in this intoxicating machine. Every lap I tried a little harder, went a little faster and delved a little deeper into the fathomless depths of this car’s ability.

After five laps I had lost the circulation in my left foot, after eight my neck was aching from trying to support my head as it was hurled forwards, backwards and from side to side with every movement of the brake, accelerator and steering wheel. And I didn’t care – I just wanted to drive this thing for ever.

Two laps later the radio jolted me back to reality: “Thank you, Andrew. In this lap, please.” In an instant it was all over. As the adrenaline stopped flowing, I was aware of pain in most of my limbs, sweat trickling down my face and the most extraordinary tiredness, partly from the pummelling I’d received from the car, partly from having slept hardly at all the night before through anticipation.

I trundled back to the pits, drove into the garage, cut the engine and sat, savouring the deafening silence. Soon the door opened and Turner leant in and asked what I thought. I replied with what even I was aware was a stream of disconnected rubbish.

Next weekend six DBR9s will line up at the start of the Le Mans 24 hours, aiming to win the GT class. It will be their third attempt, for while the team has won multiple races in the US and Europe, victory in the toughest, most famous race in the world eludes them.

Clearly the DBR9 is quick enough, and with the likes of Turner and the F1 star Johnny Herbert in the cars there will be no shortage of talent behind the wheel. But they will be up against stiff opposition, none stronger than the well-funded American Corvette team that has snatched victory from them on their last two encounters at Le Mans. Aston Martin has the car to beat the best and it has the drivers. All it needs now is a little bit of luck.

What not to miss at Le Mans

1. The Motor Racing Legends support race This is racing as it used to be in the glory days, with a fabulous grid of 1950s and 1960s Le Mans cars fighting it out on the circuit that made their names. Just to see priceless Ferraris, Porsches, Jaguars and Maseratis sliding around the track would be worth the trip on its own, but the star will be Sir Stirling Moss, racing the actual Aston Martin DBR1 that won Le Mans in 1959. Starts 10.15am on Saturday.

2. Grand Marnier pancake tent Almost as much a part of Le Mans as the Mulsanne straight: when it’s 2am, you’re cold, hungry and can’t face another plastic cup of acidic French lager, dowsing your crêpe with orange liqueur is just about as good an experience as Le Mans has to offer.

3. All the fun of the fair You can while away the small hours by scaring yourself rigid on a huge variety of fairground rides. But beware pickpockets and don’t bother with the long queues for dodgy strip shows unless you’re truly desperate.

4. Arnage and Mulsanne Most racegoers never venture much beyond the pit straight. Big mistake. You can drive, ride or catch a bus out to far-flung corners such as Arnage and Mulsanne, where you can get closer to the action, see brakes glowing red hot and, best of all, still find hot food, beer and coffee to keep you going through the night.

5. The pit-lane walkabout The pit lane is open for most of Friday, so there’s nothing to stop you wandering up and down it like Martin Brundle, and getting within a few feet of the racing cars.

6. The drivers’ parade Held on Friday at 6pm in the centre of Le Mans (La Place des Jacobins). All the drivers parade around the city, usually in the back of convertibles.

7. Radio Le Mans The best radio station in the world for petrolheads and the only way of keeping track of who’s doing what in the race. Take a pocket radio with earplugs or buy one there. Unless you have precisely zero interest in the racing, you can’t survive without it.