PALATE CLEANSER

How a Formula 1 driver prefers to travel when they're off the clock

If you’re trying to find the purest form of something, it’s always good to ask the professionals not what they work with day to day, but what they choose to engage with on their own time. Call them palette cleansers, system reboots or whatever you like, everyone has them. Whether it’s the fine dining chef taking comfort in their local fish and chip shop or a director revelling in watching cartoons, distilling the essence down to such a powerful offering that it stands tall amongst an occupation littered with other options is a sign of something special. For racing driver Max Chilton, his 1973 Porsche 911 2.7 RS Touring is just that.

“I'm a big believer that sometimes things are meant to be, and this car is the perfect example”, he explains. “ I've always dabbled in both supercars and classic cars, some I use regularly and some are more delivery mileage, garage queen investments. I’d bought a Ferrari 599 GTO for this very reason, tucking it away to watch the value go up. But after a few years I was being pulled back towards classic cars, and my heart ruled over my head and I decided to get out of that”. And move on from the garage queen he did, jumping into a 1970s Ferrari Daytona in an effort to bring back that joy of piloting old machinery.

“It was a gorgeous thing, but it just wasn’t built to be driven on the roads near me. It’s a real luxury living where I do if you’re into driving, I can literally just head out on country lanes all the way down to the South Coast. I don't need to go near any towns or any main roads. So I started to look to move on again, and I kept seeing my perfect driver’s classic car in the 2.7 RS”. Perhaps understandably given the rocky road with his past two cars, Max didn’t believe the stars would align on the car, a desirably optioned factory right hand drive Touring example finished in Jet Black with single door mirror.

The car in question was for sale with Paragon Porsche, having been sympathetically restored for the owner of the company. Needless to say, he was smitten from the get go; “I actually haven't driven a huge amount of 911s, and I’d only owned a modern 50th Anniversary model which I used as more of a daily driver before this. I haven't driven many classic 911s until I drove this one, but as soon as my wife and I pulled away I knew it was the one. There's nothing superfluous on the inside. It's just super, super simple, and really spacious. I've got long legs but I felt quite comfortable in the car, and it's got the sunroof which is great for the sunny days”.

"I kept seeing my perfect driver’s classic car in the 2.7 RS"

And as for that palette cleansing driving experience, Max raves about the purity of his 2.7. “It just handles beautifully, the steering is so precise. You absolutely know where you are with it, what grip level you've got, and it's got enough power. Enough to get the rear end out in the damp but stay nailed to the road in the dry. It's just perfection. I couldn't love it any more, and I’m never going to sell it”. Coming from a man who’s driven everything from Formula 1 to Indy 500 and even the cutting edge electric racers of the future, that’s quite an endorsement. But then again, given the legend of the 2.7 RS, are we really surprised?