How to scare a modern racing driver

Many modern racing drivers don't give two hoots about the history of the sport from which they earn their livings. They're too caught up in the here and now of racing, testing, and the inevitable PR demands that go with driving for a big organisation.

That's a slight that could not be angled towards Audi DTM driver Miguel Molina though. Now in his third year as a works racer with the German manufacturer, Molina is embracing his role and was treated to a rather special day's work earlier this month.

Joined by rally legend Carlos Sainz, the 23-year-old Spaniard headed just south of Barcelona to the historic concrete oval at Sitges to hustle an Audi R8 LMS GT car around the once rock-hard, although gradually loosening, track surface.

First a little history lesson about the location. The Autodromo Sitges-Terramar, to give it its full name, was conceived by civil engineer Frick Armangue in 1922, designed by Jaume Mestres and Josep Maria Martino.

Constructed in only 300 days at a cost of 4 million pesetas, a 1.242-mile oval circuit with a width ranging from 18 metres at its narrowest point to 22m at its widest, opened in October 1923 and immediately rendered all existing venues obsolete in terms of facilities.

Rally legend Sainz drove before Molina at Sitges

Its inaugural event, that year's Spanish Grand Prix, was won by one of the great drivers of the era; Albert Divo, who averaged a scary 96.962mph on his way to victory in his Sunbeam. Scary.

Problems were afoot though. The rapidly increasing speeds of contemporary grand prix machines meant that within a year Sitges was deemed unsuitable to host the country's big race.

Coupled with Armangue's previously unpaid construction company seizing the takings from the initial meetings, the circuit fell into financial problems and was soon banned from hosting international racing as a result.

The track was virtually abandoned by 1925, and despite the best efforts of Edgard de Morwitz, who bought the track six years later and kept local events running on the oval until the early fifties, the glory days were never to return.

It's a testament to the quality of the construction that the track, and most of the buildings around it (including those that later became a rather profitable chicken farm), are still standing in a fair condition today, and its due to this that Molina was given a chance to sample the concrete last month.

"I know quite a lot about the place," he says. "I only live an hour away in Lloret de Mar. But I'd never driven on it before, and when I sat in the car, staring at the 60 degree banking, I don't mind saying that I was scared."

Molina's steed for the day was an R8, just like the one his DTM squad Phoenix Racing would win the Nurburgring 24 Hours with a few weeks later, and with only a few minor alterations to the set-up after two-time world rally champion Sainz (whose son Carlos Jr is now Red Bull-backed) had driven the car the previous day and recommended them.

"The only thing they changed was the ride height," Molina says. "The suspension, the gears, even the slick tyres were the same as on a regular racetrack, so when I sat in the car for the first time, everything felt normal. Then I looked in front of me and saw the wall. Sixty degrees of banking. Not what you see every day.

Molina takes a turn. And what a turn it is

"When I arrived the day before, the guys asked me if I wanted to walk around the circuit, to get up on the banking and see what the drop was like on the other side. I didn't want to. Ignorance, I thought, was better."

Had he not been the ignorant kind, Molina might have backed out. For beyond the upper limit of the Turn 1 banking, there's nothing; just a drop of epic proportions down to the conurbation of Sitges itself (the town having swallowed up Terramar and Vinyet over the past 85 years).

It's the kind of thing that makes Daytona or Talladega look like the setting for a pram pushround by the local chicas, as this video proves (the second half is where the action is). With Sainz having suffered three punctures on day one of running, Molina was instructed to hold back a little, while giving it some serious beans at the same time.

"It wasn't totally flat-out. I think we got up to about 170kph [106mph] on the banking, which is fast enough when you're in a car that's got really stiff suspension and is really flying over every big bump - Carlos didn't say much about this, but I guess it's normal for him to be flying on rallies.

"The conditions were pretty difficult; 25 degrees, lots of dust, and the gap between the top of the banking and the car was pretty small. If you go away there, you're flying, so I had to be a bit careful." And only 10mph faster than Divo averaged in 1923 with no windscreen or visor, rock-hard tyres and primitive suspension...

"Those guys must have been crazy."

Given that one of Molina's most recent PR stunts had involved picking white asparagus out of the ground from a field near Hockenheim (take it from me, the Germans love it), he was pretty pleased to have been given a chance to use his right foot instead of protecting it with a shiny PVC boot.

"It's definitely the best media job I've done this year," he states emphatically. "Last year there was an event I did at the only race circuit in Peru with R8s and other cars, and that was great, but this one was very nice - better than the spargel (asparagus). And I went home in one piece as well, so it all worked out."