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We only went and got the bloody dates wrong. On the day we arrived at the Nürburgring, we expected to see a fat cat supercar day in full swing. That would mean lots of Ferraris, mostly, being driven slowly, universally.

Ferraris tend to be driven by hapless showboating bunnies, especially around the Nürburgring's Nordschleife, so picking off a million quid in a day would be easy. In fact, there was a chance we could do it in a single lap.

But no. The supercar day had happened the week before. Er, shit. So I was faced with a bunch of hard nut Germans and Brits wearing expensive open face helmets, driving gloves and boots and grim facial expressions. That'd be fine and dandy if they were piloting clapped-out MkII Golfs.

No, again. I'd never seen so many Porsche 911 GT3s and Turbos and BMW M3s in one place, some fitted with near-slick tyres. These boys will be quick and will know this place.

Unlike yours truly, whose familiarity with the track goes no further than a Sony PS2 game called Gran Turismo 4, using a plastic steering wheel attached to an ironing board. Braking point? What's that, then? Lucky I'm driving a supercharged Ariel Atom...

Ah, Atom, the purity of it. No roof, no bodywork, no heater, no windscreen. Just some beautifully designed, high-grade steel tubing, four wheels and a very powerful engine. It's blindingly rapid by any standard, road or race - as you would expect of a thing weighing only 456kg and packing 300bhp. A two-litre Honda VTEC engine from the Civic Type-R, with a Jackson Racing blower sitting right behind your spine gives it plenty of urge, revving clean and quick to 8,500rpm. It's a fabulous unit.

A power-to-weight ratio of 660bhp per tonne puts the Atom into a rarified zone. A Ferrari Enzo, by comparison, weighs 1,365kg and produces 660bhp for a power-to-weight ratio of 483bhp per tonne. Bugatti Veyron? That's 987bhp, 1,888kg and 522bhp per tonne... the Veyron won Autocar magazine's 0-100-0 test this year with a time of 9.9 seconds, but the Atom was the best of the rest with 10.68secs. The Atom's 0-60mph time? About 2.9 seconds.

The car's scary enough, but the track is truly terrifying. You probably know that the Nürburgring's Nordschleife (the north loop) is the world's longest and most challenging race circuit, lurking in the Eiffel mountains in northwest Germany. It is 13 miles long, has 75 corners - many of them blind and off-camber, high speed and difficult, with no run-off - and is open to the public on many days throughout the summer.

It's classed as a 'toll road' where you can do any speed you like for 16 euros a lap and where quite a few people are seriously injured every year. Especially bikers, who are let on the track at the same time as the cars. And the buses, vans and trucks...