Sorry folks, but unless you have any intention of becoming a race driver for Merciel, you aren’t ever going to be able to drive car I’m sitting in today. The Merciel Corsaire GTE will make it’s motorsport debut next year in a number of big GT and endurance competitions, marking a big return for the company who will be entering into one of the fiercest times for the disciplines we’ve ever seen. It’s a good job this baby comes packing 722 hp and weighs about as much as a tea towel.
We’ve also got some nice quiet Yorkshire Dales roads to ourselves, courtesy of the lovely guys at Merciel (thanks also for that rally event you got me into back at Geneva earlier this year), which at least means the chance of me soiling myself isn’t quite as high as it would otherwise be. I don’t often drive race cars, you see.
The Corsaire GTE is clever. It combats on costs to make it cheaper to run, whilst still remaining very, very competitive. Fibreglass body with aluminum chassis instead of going all-aluminum or adding in some carbon fibre for good measure; turbocharging a homologated engine instead of designing something all new; taking away the heavy active spring sets but keeping the active dampers to keep it agile. Little things like that make a big difference on the track.
I won’t be able to properly see just what this thing is capable of, as we aren’t at a track, we’re in overcast late-August Yorkshire. Plus, it isn’t exactly setup properly for such roads. But that doesn’t stop it from being wildly able out here. It’s so bloody nippy, with razor sharp precision in the throttle and an absolute response, by which I mean it feels like even the Earth itself trembles a little when you hit the magical 3500 rpm and the turbos spool up fully. There was never once a moment when I accelerated this thing where I didn’t feel on the edge of death all day.
It’s remarkably refreshing to hear a straight-six race engine. It’s somehow more sophisticated - in an upper class, stately fashion that is - than brash V8s and brummy V6s more common in this sort of racing these days. It’s also a symphony of noise in itself, and the epic valleys that we drive above echo with its reverberations. I almost wish I could sit 2 miles away and hear this drive past more than I wish I could drive it on a track, just to experience how it would sound.
Obviously, this is not something unique to just this particular car. A lot of race cars sound pretty darn good however near or far you are from, but it’s very different when you’re actually driving one. You forget just how much of an impact even a basic interior can make on sound insulation, meaning that when you have nothing at all, you have absolute nothing to shield you from every fiery vibration. Along with standing next to the amps at an Oasis concert, it’s the only other way I’d want to go deaf.
Strangely enough for a race car though, it’s not quite as sharp on the steering as you’d expect. By god it’s hard to drive, but you can trust it to respond when you turn the wheel, and it feels weirdly soft for such a car. It’s the one I’d want to be in at Le Mans given how comfortable it is for such a car. The French clearly care about the welfare of their drivers it seems (and yes, I did try to think of a politically relevant joke regarding France’s age-old traditions of being absolutley subservient to their working class. Which is a good thing, I might point out, though I’ll stop being this becomes an article in a politics textbook)
It feels tight at the rear end, and subtle else where. It’s balanced, but has it’s limits and will understeer eventually. But, it can pull some serious G in the corners, and especially on the banked bends on the roads I drove it on, it held its own phenomenally. You can fly through the twisties with this thing all day, every day.
Of course, I can’t really give a sutible judgement on this car, as I’m not a race driver. Give it about 7 months though, and we’ll be able to see what this thing is really capable of when it gets its racing debut. For now, I’ve got the memory of driving this fantastic machine and you’ve got the text I’ve written here about it. Driving a race car is not something for everyone, I should point out, and it’s about as un-easy as driving gets. This is a perfect example; the Corsaire GTE is a stupidly fast car, that does deep down probably want to kill you, but thankfully the Merciel team behind it have reduced such tendencies a bit.
- Gavin Anderson