WHAT JENSON DID NEXT

What do F1 world champions do when they retire? They resurrect a classic British coachbuilder and develop their ultimate road car, obviously

- OLLIE MARRIAGE

The plan was to drive to Prescott National Forest, because the high roads of Yavapai County in northern Arizona looked wonderful. It was about 110 miles from our Scottsdale Airbnb. But that evening, after an, er, eventful day on track, I realised something. I didn't fancy driving the Radford that far.

You see this is not one of those supercars that has bandwidth. It's raw and single minded, and although this is a development car and yet to have a final dynamic polish, that's not going to turn it into a limber, languorous tourer. And there's a reason for that. This is Jenson's car.

We're in no surname required territory here, aren't we? But also on familiar terrain for top flight racing drivers. In a few pages' time you'll see Dario Franchitti in the GMA T.50. There must be something written in a contract that says Porsche can't launch a car without a personal appearance from Walter Röhrl and Honda NSX is basically word association for Ayrton Senna.

So what's made the 2009 Formula One world champion get involved with a tiny start-up? "The whole thing for me was after a career of developing cars and the high stress of F1. I wanted to do something I was passionate about, developing something that's truly mechanical and people will jump in and go 'Wow, that's cool, that's fun'."