“The first time I saw Denny [Hulme] come past the pits at Goodwood — the ground literally shook — I wondered what I had let myself in for,” Gethin continues. “But the car [M8D] was fantastic, of course, and by the end of the test session you were asking for another 100bhp.
“But that was in the dry. In the wet, on occasion I would simply drop the clutch at a slow corner and roll round it. That was the only way to do it. Even the slightest whiff of throttle would cause wheelspin.
“The problems in the dry were that the car was very heavy to drive and hot. That’s when I realised how tough and strong Denny was. I could keep up with him for the first 100 miles or so, but I struggled in the second 100 miles and he would gradually pull away. The worst race was at Road Atlanta in the Deep South; it was incredibly hot and humid. I was leading when I broke down near the end, and the marshals literally had to lift me out.”
The calipers tucked away inside those McLaren four-spoker fronts are shamed by today’s Evo road machines.
He’s right. We’re just rumbling around for photographs — simply resting your foot on the throttle in second gear is good enough for 60mph — but already the BTUs from the front-mounted radiator are wafting up through the cockpit, while the Chevy’s ‘killer’ joules are percolating nicely through the thin, reclining metal bulkhead that separates me from it. The steering is a bit bicep-curly, too — and that’s without downforce exerting its unseen hand.