Staying in second for Top Gear Live

When you're invited to drive someone else's car quickly on a race track, extra-ordinary measures are taken to ensure you don't break it -- or you.

Safety cones are put in place to show you the smoothest way around a corner, and chicanes interrupt the long straights to trim your top speed.

Sometimes there's a professional race driver leading the convoy to control your speed -- or someone in the passenger's seat who can beat you about the head if you don't listen to their instructions muffled through a helmet.

These are just some of the frustrating necessities brought about by politicians -- or, more to the point, health and safety regulations.

So when I was unwisely handed the keys to a brand new Renault Clio Sport and asked to weave it as fast as humanly possible through a maze of scaffolding in the back lot of the Top Gear Live show in Melbourne at the weekend, there was extreme trepidation -- from me, and Renault who, oddly enough, wanted their car back in one piece.

Renault had brought a couple of Clios to the Top Gear Live outdoor event to put some celebrities through their paces. So I don't know why an invitation was extended to me and journo rival Paul Gover. Perhaps they wanted to give the crowd something to laugh at.

The good thing was that we were first up, when the "crowd" wasn't at the show. The only people we could be embarrassed in front of were the flag marshalls. But they're mad gossipers. Our reputations -- however shredded they already are -- would certainly be in tatters if we tried to marry a Renault with a piece of steel fence.

Adding to the pressure, the car was brand spanking new. It still had the nobbles on the edge of the tyres. I know this because I got there early to inspect the cars, and then interrogate the Renault staff about the level of preparation done to the vehicles.

I decided on the white one because the blue one had been thrashed by a couple of celebrities during a test run that morning. I, of course, kept that information to myself and promptly requested the white car.

Imagine my delight when Gover insisted on the blue car. The only person happier than me at that precise moment was the PR lady who then didn't have to intervene in a scrap between two journos who thought they were racing for sheep stations when really they were there to fill in some time while no-one was watching.

More pressure: the car was not just any Renault Clio Sport, but the Gordini edition, of which only a handful have been imported.

More pressure still: while making chit-chat a guy who owned a Lamborghini race car heard what I was driving and then joked "don't crash it".

I mean, who says that? Who says: "I hope you don't get hit by a truck on the way to the shops and die". Doesn't he know I'm superstitious? I immediately had to go and find some wood. My head wasn't thick enough, so I hugged a nearby tree.

Then I did a sighting lap. Damn. Should have hugged two trees. This is the trickiest track I've ever been on.

Never before have I wanted health and safety regulations to impose on my fun. But I was looking for a politician after my slow sighting lap. Surely we can legislate against this in the next half hour -- before we're due to start our timed run.

Incredibly, this is the same track that 120 beautiful and classic cars weaved around? Yikes. I bet they weren't brave.

The only person more stupid than me at this point -- and believe me, that's a struggle -- is Nathan Pretty. Race driver and Bathurst 24 Hour winner.

He's a top bloke but he'd been given the job of keeping everyone in check and showing them the course. He put on a brave face but I think he was sh#@ting himself more than me. His knee flinched every time we got close to a barrier -- which was every turn. I thought he had epilepsy -- and that I would be the one calling for a paramedic.

The course was easy in the sense that you left the car in second gear everywhere and let the power band of the Clio's 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine -- and the chassis -- do their jobs.

Good thing the Clio has go-kart handling, because we were on a go-kart track. Indeed, moments earlier V8 Supercar drivers Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup did the circuit in a go-kart. And a Mini Moke. And a Peel electric car.

The upshot of it is that both Gover and I managed to not crash. But he did beat me, the bugger. For the record he did it in 1min32.2 seconds, and I did it in 1min32.4 seconds. Bugger. Should've chosen the blue car.

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