Blasting around Monaco in a classic Williams

The phone rang a few months ago and it was Williams Heritage boss Jonathan Williams asking, "How do you fancy doing a demo at the Monaco Historique in the FW08C?" Drive at one of my top-three favourite circuits, in a car that took one of the most memorable Monaco Grand Prix victories? "Yes please!"

The circuit at Monaco is a bit divisive when it comes to drivers' opinions. Nelson Piquet hated it while others absolutely loved it. I'm very firmly in that second camp. I've been very fortunate to race at Monaco in World Series by Renault, GP2 and Formula 1 and, along with Suzuka and Le Mans, the circuit holds a special place in my heart. Every corner is unique and the streets of the Principality are steeped in history. Ste Devote, Casino Square, Mirabeau, Portier, Tabac and La Rascasse all mean something special to any true motorsport fan.

I've had plenty of highs and lows there myself. Finishing on the podium in GP2 in 2008 remains one of my most treasured memories, while having the driveshaft fail when I was leading comfortably a year later with just eight laps to go still hurts. I suppose narrowly avoiding being decapitated by Jarno Trulli in '10 is probably not something I want to remember too often either!

The FW08C is a very special car for two reasons. Firstly, Keke Rosberg drove it to Monaco GP victory in spectacular style in 1983. Secondly, a young Brazilian called Ayrton Senna da Silva had his first F1 test in this car. I've been lucky to have driven the FW08C on a few occasions and the short-wheelbase car with the very user-friendly Cosworth DFV engine was always great fun to drive. Driving it at Monaco though was going to be very special.

The organisers gave us two slots over the weekend to demonstrate the car with some others from McLaren and Lotus. For me to share a circuit with drivers such as Mika Hakkinen, Riccardo Patrese and Eddie Irvine, who were winning grands prix when I was still a teenaged schoolkid in India, was pretty damn cool on its own.

The best way I can explain the difference between a modern GP car and one from the early 1980s is that it's like going back from a digital world to an analogue one. You really have to drive the cars from the past. There are no electronics to help you - no fly-by-wire throttle pedals, no trick engine maps to help your power delivery, no brake-by-wire systems to control the wheel locking and balance the brake pressure, no power-steering, no electronic differentials to assist the balance of the car at every phase of the corner. Oh, and of course no paddleshift gear-selection system to help you keep both hands on the wheel, which is especially useful at a circuit like Monte Carlo!

As I climb into Keke's seat, the first thought I have is just how bloody uncomfortable it is. This is a generic fibreglass seat made out of a fixed mould and means that you're sitting pretty much bolt upright. Nowadays, the drivers spend days making seats that are millimetre-perfect to ensure that they're as comfortable in the car as they would be on their sofa. How on earth these guys drove around the bumpy streets of Monaco for two hours like that I have no idea. Hard as nails was Keke.

The next thing that becomes immediately apparent is just how far forward in the car I'm sitting. I really don't want to miss that braking point going into Mirabeau as it will certainly mean a trip to the Princess Grace Hospital with my ankles not feeling great! When the guys at Williams Heritage stripped the car down and weighed the 'monocoque', it was only 27kg. Basically, I felt like I was sitting in a big tin can held together by some rivets (it's obviously not, but in fact an aluminium honeycomb).

The engine fires up and, as I head out onto the track, all those thoughts go away. No longer am I thinking about the fact that this is a highly valuable - and potentially dangerous - piece of F1 history that's been wheeled out of a museum for me. Suddenly that familiar sight of the climb towards the Hotel de Paris takes over and I floor the throttle. I haven't raced in Monaco for seven years, but the human brain's ability to retain information and delve deep into those reserves when it needs to is amazing. Immediately my reference points of drains, barriers, pedestrian crossings and kerbs all come back.

How on earth these guys drove around the bumpy streets of Monaco for two hours I have no idea

Now, I've never raced around Monaco with a manual-gearbox car. The FW08C has a six-speed 'box and this means that you spend an awful lot of the lap with one hand on the lever. These days we take for granted just how little attention we need to pay to gear ratios to make it easy for the drivers. I think back to my days in Formula 3, when we would often tweak ratios so we didn't have to change gear mid-corner and give ourselves a bit more comfort.

The demonstration organised for us only has nine cars on track, which means that unlike every other session I've ever done here in Monaco, we actually have space to play around. As the tyre temperatures build up and I start to lean on it, I realise just how much time is spent thinking about choosing the right gear. Suddenly, powering from Tabac and attacking the entry of the Swimming Pool complex isn't as easy, as you need to take a hand off the wheel to hook fourth gear.

As I come out of Casino Square and accelerate down to Mirabeau, I have this distinct memory of seeing Keke powersliding on slicks in the damp, the back of the car dancing around as he played with the throttle. The part you don't see on the video is how, while doing that, he needed to be brave enough to take one hand off the wheel and change gear while the car tracks the various camber changes and bumps on the road going downhill. Oh, and do that in the damp, on slicks, for 76 laps.

The DFV is one of the sport's great icons. Back in 1983, F1 was firmly into the first turbo era and the Williams, with its normally aspirated engine, had no chance on big-power circuits like Silverstone or Paul Ricard (the team switched to Honda turbo power before the end of the season). But on a twisty track like Monaco, especially in the damp, the linear torque curve made the engine very user-friendly, while the drivers trying to manage the mighty turbos struggled to put the power down as they went in and out of the lag zone. Rosberg started fifth on the grid that day and led the race by the end of the first lap - in the 35 years since, nobody has done that from outside the top two rows of the grid!

The engine feels beautifully predictable to drive and, with a car weighing just over 500kg, the 520bhp gives it plenty of grunt, especially when you consider the lack of downforce and drag in comparison to a modern car. When you come out of Portier and hammer the throttle for the blast through the tunnel, the traction offered by the huge rear tyres is immense and you really do punch out of the corners.

Thankfully for someone like me who has raced with a paddleshift car for the past 12 years, the six-speed gearbox is very user-friendly and is a reminder of what a design genius Sir Patrick Head was. Bearing in mind this was designed 35 years ago with a fraction of the design tools and machining equipment available today, plus no simulation software, every gearshift feels like a positive 'click' into position, and in fact even going down to first gear for corners like Rascasse isn't a problem.

If I think about what the car is like in terms of the chassis, I'd say it was almost designed to excel at circuits like Monaco. The short wheelbase makes it very agile. Monaco is a circuit where you need a good front end and have the confidence to get the front of the car turned in quickly while also having the confidence that the rear stays gripped-up.

The big rear tyres offer that rear-end grip, but the small front tyres actually make the steering quite light in the fast corners, which isn't particularly confidence-inspiring through the tunnel or the quick Swimming Pool chicane. I'm sure that with more laps it's something I would get used to, but this light front end is also a reminder of just how much aerodynamic load goes through the front end of a modern car relative to something from 35 years ago. The drivers back then didn't have the training regimes that we have today and the tracks were much bumpier than the modern circuits, so I'm sure they were thankful that the steering wasn't any heavier.

The 1983 season was the first after the ground effect era in F1 where the cars were set up to be ultra-stiff and they rattled the drivers' bones to the core. The lap times in '83 were slower than the year before because the skirts were gone, but it made driving the cars a much more pleasant experience.

Over the crests, bumps and kerbs, the car is actually very compliant, which again underlines why it was user-friendly for a track like Monaco. The track today is a lot smoother than it used to be - in fact I remember coming here in GP2 in 2008 and running pretty much the same springs, rollbars, packers and rideheight as Magny-Cours a month later. In a way, this is a bit of a shame as I think bumpy tracks such as Sebring or Macau have so much more character, and the bumps are a part of the challenge for the drivers.

Driving the FW08C at Monaco has made me respect Keke and his peers more than ever

Driving the FW08C at Monaco has made me respect Rosberg and his peers more than ever. The cars of that era needed the driver to be completely on top of them. You really have to grab it by the scruff of the neck and hustle it to get it to respond in the way you want it to. They had no electronics or, for that matter, the level of refined downforce to help them.

I don't want to come across as one of those people who looks at the past as being infinitely better than the present, because that's not 100% true. The modern cars are brilliant pieces of engineering and the technology involved with the power units and the sheer grip from the downforce is something immense. I was lucky to drive a 2017 F1 car last year and the grip in the high-speed corners and under braking blew my mind. The top guys like Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso still extract that extra bit of performance and the cream still rises to the top. The early '80s was just a different time, with some very special drivers and some very special cars.