We film as much of each...

We film as much of each show as we can before a series starts, but of course new stories crop up all the time and we need to do justice to them before they become out of date.

Tomorrow"s particularly tough - I"m off to Maranello in Italy for a day in a Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano! Trips to drive such exotic machines are very rare, so I tend to savour every moment, trying to soak up as much of the experience as possible. My responsibility to TV viewers means I have to try and take them with me on the drive to give a real feeling of what it is like to be behind the wheel. My problem is that I only get a taste - and then the car maker takes it away...

But while I"m really excited about what this Ferrari has to offer, we must all remember that you don"t have to go exotic to enjoy four wheels. Fast isn"t always fun; grip means cornering speeds that leave your passengers hanging on to the grab handles - and accidents if it all goes wrong.

I learned my "trade" in my mum"s Morris 1000, which handled brilliantly. No grip, but beautiful balance and graceful opposite lock around wet roundabouts at 20mph! If it all went wrong, I was only left looking backwards - and feeling embarrassed. This highlights a key problem of the modern front-wheel-drive hot hatch era. While young drivers can corner at 40, 45 - even 50 - when they lose grip for the first time it"s understeer... lift off... oversteer... over-correct... and head-on into a tree.

Wanting to "un-invent" grip might sound weird, but there"s no doubt that having too much of it can be dangerous, and is what has turned Grand Prix racing into the high speed game of chess it is today. People are blinded by the need to go faster when the real joy is balancing a car on the limit - and the slower the speed, the safer it is! On-screen colleague Jason Plato and I recently had a real hoot, with me in a Westfield built Lotus XI replica and him in a Technic "Porsche" 550 RS. Despite being based on Fifties classics, both were hugely rewarding drives - although probably safer than the originals! Nowadays, you can get a Mazda MX-5 on a track to learn about car balance.

Speaking of tracks, I was back on one recently. I"m not a retired racing driver yet - that"s a word you"ll never hear me use - so the cameras also came on board when I joined the fun at the FIA GT3 Championship at Silverstone. This is a new concept in GT racing, with a maximum of nine cars from each manufacturer and regulations that try to "equalise" them with weight and air restrictors.

With 51 entries, the series opener was a huge success and the world"s top eight supercar manufacturers were represented. Overall victories went to the Ferrari 430 and Dodge Viper, while I was driving one of the six Aston Martin DBRS9s entered. I managed to get into the lead for the Astons, but sadly we were only fighting for 10th overall so we"re hoping for a bit more "equality" when the series moves to Germany at the end of June. But before all that there"s the Ferrari to try...