I've just spent a very memorable morning travelling from central London to Silverstone.
It’s the sort of journey that would normally cause serious stress on the south eas
t's traffic clogged road network, but today it was rather wonderful.
In part this was due to my wheels for the occasion, an Aston Martin DBS, but in la rger measure it was thanks to Sergeant Paul Mostyn of the Metropolitan Police's Tactical Motorbike Unit and six of his colleagues, who worked together to give the Aston - and the 35 other supercars in our procession - the sort of experience more normally enjoyed by senior government ministers and visiting heads of state.
The ev ent was the Ro yal Automobile Club's annual supercar run to deli
ver the tourist trophy for this season's British FIA GT championship. A good excuse for a thrash and, thanks to close links between the Royal Automobile Club and the Met, an event considered important enough to earn the full set of police outriders.
And, if there's a finer feeling than driving an Aston through a red light while a policeman waves you to go faster and an appreciative crowd applauds and takes pics from the pavement, I've yet to experience it. The fact that all this happened in Kenistan, and that barely a single vehicle in the procession falls within emissions band G, made it all the sweeter.
And, despite the presence of a Ferrari F50, a fire-spitting De Tomaso Pantera and a brand new Gallardo Superleggera, the DBS was the star of the show. “That's James Bond's car,” I heard a father tell his young son as our procession ground to a momentary halt. Junior was suitably impressed, although his next question was all too clear: “Why did he let that fat bloke drive it, then?”
Other than that, magical.
