After 25 years I was reunited with the Ascari A410, the sports prototype that last contested the Le Mans 24 hours in 2002. The Ascari bridged the gap between Group C racing and the noisier era that followed it. In a former life, the carbon-fibre chassis had been a Lola T92/10 until they cut the roof off and John McNeil went about designing the bodywork. A 4.0-litre Judd V10 motor, re-purposed from Formula 1 duty, was bolted into the back. Stepping into the car was like sliding on an old set of trainers, back to a time when I thought I could breakdance.

At 11,500rpm in sixth gear it reached 220mph. At Le Mans, the trees bordering Mulsanne fixed into a constant peripheral blur. The dotted while line in the centre of the road vanished beneath the bodywork like tracer fire. I had a cauliflower ear from playing rugby and occasionally an earplug would slip out, so I got treated to the full roar. If a Greek God ever trod on a piece of Lego, that was the sound it would make.

The first time I drove the Ascari was in 2001 at Barcelona when it was engaged in the FIA Sportscar Championship in what was then the premier league of Le Mans racing: LMP900, or Le Mans prototypes weighing 900kg. I was in Formula 3 at the time and having won a few races, thought I was a big deal. Team Ascari was looking for someone to partner Werner Lupberger and had been trying out a roster of drivers with far bigger CVs than mine.

“I worked out daily to build the fitness needed to drive the car for four hours straight at Le Mans”

Werner’s physique resembled that of Rocky Balboa, muscles bulging against the stitches of his Nomex. The Ascari with Werner at the helm tore past us on the pitstraight at 190mph, the engine screaming as he crashed down the sequential gearbox to make the chicane. A shiver descended my spine. “You’re in this lap,” chief engineer Brian Ireland wailed in my ear.

The car appeared in the pitlane looking low and angry, the engine banging against its rev limiter to restrict the car’s speed to 60mph. It swung in and I noticed Werner’s chest heaving against the shoulder belts as he drew in giant gulps of air. I slid in, reached past the upper left side of the steering wheel to flick on the ignition and then to the right to fire the motor. ‘Whomp’ went the engine. Eight-hundred bhp at the tip of my toe in a machine that weighed less than a Mini, with more downforce than an F1 car – and they were letting me loose in it…?

The lollypop man released me and off I went. No power steering. Within two corners my arms were burning. Every apex requiring more than 90 degrees of steering became an enemy. As I opened the tap on the throttle and the beast squirmed out of the corner, rapid steering corrections were required to trim the attitude of the tail or succumb to the embrace of gravel and Armco. Three laps later, I was done in.

Back in the pits, Brian plugged his computer into the car’s brain and then came to download mine. “How’s the car?” There are friends who want to talk when you go for a run with them. It was like that, except that this was a job interview so: “It’s… huhhh… re—heaally… go-ood” wouldn’t pass muster. I did my best. “Some understeer here,” I told him, “the tyres felt clapped out in the slow corners so I had some wheelspin…” yaddy-yadda. “OK, we’ll soften the rear bar, do a 10-lap run and we’ll see how you get on.” Translation: drive it like you stole it if you want the job.

I did my best. Braking into the chicane at 190mph with that much downforce produced so much grip that it was impossible to lock a tyre at the onset, so I smashed the pedal with enough pressure to produce diamonds from coal. I eased the pressure as the speed bled off below 80mph, cranked the steering and the Ascari darted eagerly towards the apex. It felt lighter than the huge body suggested. The throttle was delicate. Crack it open and the chassis responded instantly. In medium speed corners it settled the rear as the acceleration force squatted it into the deck, but squeeze it past 50% and the horsepower unleashed through the rear differential and the car scrabbled onto the straight.

The physical effort of withstanding so many forces to drive as precisely as the car demanded took everything I had. I pulled in and Brian left me alone as I climbed, or rather fell out of the car. Werner stood with his arms crossed, Iceman sunglasses on, and gave me a knowing nod as I peeled off my balaclava.

A few days later I got a call to come up to the factory and to my great surprise, they hired me. I worked out daily to build the fitness needed to drive the car consistently and fast for four hours straight at Le Mans, or for three hours in the 6 Hours ’sprint’ races I shared with Werner. We battled with Ferrari all season, made a few tactical errors like running out of fuel, won at Donington and placed fourth in the championship.

A brilliant aerodynamicist called Andy Coventry was brought in to revamp the car and he turned up looking like Adrian Mole. On a cold test day at Snetterton we eyed this stranger with scepticism and had to restrain the chief mechanic when Andy took a disliking to a section of the rear floor, and cut it off with a saw. At a stroke it lapped a second faster. He eventually managed to reduce the overall drag of the car while increasing the downforce to lop multiple seconds off our lap times at Le Mans.

We were a small team but we battled with giants. Michelin made the fastest tyres back then but they were in limited supply so we made do with Goodyear and Dunlop. Despite lacking overall pace, they were durable and extremely fast in the rain. Werner qualified on the front row for the 2002 Daytona 24 Hours, while at Le Mans I was hunting down the lead Audi during the monsoon of 2001 until a fuel pump died at 4am.

The dangers of racing a roofless prototype seemed obvious when you drove one. Large insects and clumps of rubber pinged off your helmet’s visor. When it rained, you got wet. If the car went upside down, you landed on your head. Prototypes went through a phase of flipping into the air at high speed when the pressure of downforce had an argument with the airstream and we had to monitor for signs of cavitation. Thankfully it was never a problem in the Ascari and the sheer exhilaration of racing in open cockpits was worth the risk anyway.

“My 10 laps were over all too quickly but the addiction to driving that Ascari was back”

There was never a dull moment at Team Ascari and that stemmed from our fearless leader, Klaas Zwart. An oil wildcat and engineering genius, his dream was to build a car company and promote it by winning Le Mans. His lair was the Ascari resort and circuit near Marbella, built to mirror Formula 1’s most challenging corners. When it rained, Klaas didn’t like to wait for it to dry, so he would use his helicopter to blow-dry it.

His first car design was the Ecosse, a lightweight spaceframe chassis with a glassfibre and Kevlar body, mated to a BMW 4.4-litre V8. It was followed by the all carbon-fibre KZ1, on which the GT3 racing car was built, and then there was the middle child: the A10. A GT2 racing car with a numberplate. Jeremy Clarkson described it as “staggering” and I lapped it around the Top Gear track on a damp day to within a few tenths of my lap record in a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport.

Ascari closed its doors in 2010 and the Le Mans cars went into storage. They lurked under tarpaulins until their era returned to the limelight, thanks to the Peter Auto racing series that has embraced these noughties mega beasts and even returns them to compete at Le Mans.

Sam Hancock, an old racing rival of mine who restores and sells these incredible cars, instantly saw the opportunity to revive one of the most potent and exhilarating machines from that era. He partnered with Pastorelli cars in Maranello to restore them to their prime and after a year in the workshop, asked me if I could still fit into a race suit.