Normally at this time of year, my off-the-field sporting exploits involve wondering whether I’ll bother to scrape a season’s worth of mud off of my football boots, and wishing I’d removed that soggy towel from my cricket bag after the last game of the previous summer.

But not this year. No, this summer’s sporting preparations are of a totally different kind.

So far, they have involved me having fittings for boots, helmets and white clothing (but not my cricket whites), complete with a trip to Snetterton to test drive a racing car.

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That’s because I’ve been given the ‘guest car’ slot in the Radical SR1 Cup, a low-cost, one-make UK race series for Radical’s entry level SR1 model that runs over four weekends between June and September.

The championship launched in 2013, designed as an accessible entry point onto the Radical racing ladder and a stepping stone for those looking to take their track day experience into racing proper.

In 2013, Sir Chris Hoy, one of our greatest Olympians, took the SR1 guest car slot to launch his racing career. Last year, the guest car was driven by Andy Green, he of world’s fastest man fame,as he prepared for driving Bloodhound at 1000mph.

And this year it’s me, neither an Olympian nor a record holder, rather someone who wants to share with you the ups (hopefully) and downs (most likely) of a racing season as a novice.

How have I got on so far? Well, the helmet is a size medium and the suit a 52, whatever that means. Oh, the car? Well, it’s blown me away.

Now as you’d expect in this job I have driven a fair amount of performance machinery on circuits, but never a race car, which rather unsurprisingly turns out is a completely different proposition.

The SR1 weighs just 480kg before my 75kg joins in, and power comes from a 1.3-litre Suzuki bike engine with a considerable 185bhp. It also has fully working aero and produces noticeable levels of downforce; a novice’s car in name only, in other words.

It is, simply, uncompromised as a driving machine by the need to be used on the road, therefore every part of its make-up is designed to get you around the circuit as quickly as possible.

I didn’t start too well. After three nervy installation laps behind the pace car, which included me stalling in the pitlane, I met with my instructor, Radical legend and thoroughly all-round good guy Roger Bromiley, who talked me through the car and showed me a video of the Snetterton circuit and its optimum lines, before taking me out in my SR1 (in Autocar colours, of course).