Opinion: how Performance Car of the Year 2025 turned into a nightmare

I recently ranted about the vomit inducing decadence of Car Week, in Monterey, California. Even thinking about it makes me want to have a long shower. However, there is another tonic that’s even more revitalising. We call it Performance Car of the Year and it’s, well, amazing. The concept is simply to celebrate the fastest, coolest, most exciting and wildest cars to have arrived in the past 12 months.

This year the execution involved three days at Portimão racetrack and a further two days on some fantastic roads nearby. It’s also a great chance for TG’s staff and contributors to get together and share embarrassing stories, frustrations, tales of derring do and hopes and dreams for the year ahead. For the video crew it’s a chance to trial wildly complex camera rigs and leave the photographers with about six minutes per day to shoot the gorgeous stills for the magazine and website.

However, this year’s PCOTY had a new and unforeseen element and played out like a kind of cruel Top Gear x Squid Games collaboration. Every day our numbers would dwindle, colleagues succumbing in ever more gruesome and chilling ways. Ollie Marriage announced the evil in our midst in the most shocking way possible. First the colour drained from his face, then he reported feeling a bit queasy. Moments later he scurried to the toilet and was violently, vociferously sick. Food poisoning, norovirus or demonic possession? Nobody could be sure.

Ben Pulman fell next. All 7ft 3in of him. Press offices have nightmares about his seek and destroy all objections approach to booking cars. If this thing could infect and disable TG’s very own T-1000 weapon of mass organisation, then how would anyone be spared? More importantly, how would we function without him repeatedly telling us to sign forms?

Next up the art department lost its kingpin, creative director Andy Franklin. Honestly, nobody noticed, but it did make the evening karting race less of a foregone conclusion. Digital director Simon Bond made it to the chequered flag but fire hosed the hotel lawn with vomit once we arrived back. And so it went on. Who would be next? If the Stig could talk I suspect even he might question the wisdom of an immaculate white race suit.

But some of us did survive to the final day. The strongest. The most committed to the cause. And it was going so well. Until some enthusiastic locals turned up to swoon over the cars and show us pictures of their Mitsubishi Evo collection. We bonded despite the language barrier and before leaving they opened the door to the van they’d arrived in and offered us various baked goods.

Head of content Rowan Horncastle – unbowed by the horror of recent days – dove for an innocent enough looking pastry. As he took a courageous, generous bite, one of our number enquired as to the filling. The reply was devastating and swift. “This one prawn.” That night, Rowan left the survivors and crossed over to the other side. He hasn’t been seen since. Who knew PCOTY could be even more vomit inducing than Car Week?

Photograph: Mark Riccioni