Gold Coast Bulletin reporters take to the track in ultimate hot lap showdown with V8 Supercar drivers Mark Winterbottom and Steve Owen

TWO V8 superstars teamed up with two Bulletin journos in the ultimate hot lap showdown. See how they coped as passengers with the girls behind the wheel of the speed machines.

“YEAH, she’s going with you mate,” V8 Supercar champ Steve Owen said to teammate Mark Winterbottom after I mentioned my occasional motion sickness.

Winterbottom looked doubtfully in my direction.

“Have you seen someone be sick in a race car?” he said.

They looked at each other and I could see Frosty had won that battle. It would be the only one he won that day.

SURFERS SET TO RUMBLE AS V8S KICK OFF

OFF THE RAILS, DRIVER TAKES TO TRACKS

If you cut Owen, he would probably bleed teeny-tiny race cars.

Reporters Kathleen Skene and Tanya Westthorp teamed up with V8 drivers Mark Winterbottom and Steve Owen to do the fastest lap around the Norwell racetrack. Picture: David Clark

The former track marshal and mechanic has raced multiple categories for more than 15 years and he won the GC600 in 2010, driving with Jamie Whincup.

I imagine he felt something similar driving with me this week, when we beat Frosty and my Bulletin colleague Tanya Westthorp in a time trial at the V8 Supercars Official Driving Experience at Norwell.

After a slow lap in the course car to get our bearings, Tanya and I suited up and each got behind the wheel of a 420hp speed machine.

Encased in roll bars, clad in helmets and fire suits and seat-belted into near-paralysis, just sitting in one of these cars is an experience.

Tanya Westthorp gets set to speed around the track in the ultimate hot lap showdown with V8 Superstar Mark Winterbottom as her instructor. Picture: David Clark

We’re told to keep it in gears three and four and I muddle through my first lap, over-thinking the brake points, apexes and other witches hats whose names I couldn’t remember.

Tanya began her lap as I reached halfway and it was somewhere during lap two that I stopped muddling.

Owen, who works this track as an instructor when he’s not racing, is in my ear: “faster into the turns”, “go it”, “don’t brake here”.

So I go it, the tyres are making satisfying sounds as we skid through the turns, flecks of rubber are flying in through the meshed window frames and I realise this is really ridiculously fun.

Frosty or no Frosty, there was no way Tanya was going to catch me.

Reporters Kathleen Skene and Tanya Westthorp teamed up with V8 drivers Steve Owen and Mark Winterbottom to do the fastest lap around the Norwell racetrack. Picture: David Clark

I post a fastest lap time of 1.16.06, with Tanya mere millimetres behind on 1.18.59.

We both agree one more lap would have got us closer to the one-minute mark, and vow to make it up next time we get to race V8 Supercars with champion drivers on board.

But, for now, there’s not even three seconds in it, and it’s down to the guys to decide which team will take bragging rights.

We switch seats with them, and they promptly show us exactly how it’s done.

Using every centimetre of the track, Owen is smashing it and I’m chuffed to say his slowest lap time was the same as my fastest lap. All I can do is grin dumbly as the car sweeps through the turns, the momentum making my limbs fly about like I’m in space. I may or may not have laughed like a maniac.

When we stop, I’m clutching the engine’s kill switch.

“Why are you holding that?” Owen asks. “Were you going to press it?”

“It fell off the dash,” I reply. It really did and I hope he ­believed me.

We’re done, the times are; Owen has posted a lap at 1.05.41, and Frosty has edged him out by less than a second on 1.04.74.

But this particular win was to be based on the combined best lap times of each team, so that edge was not enough for them to claim victory. Team Skene-Owen won with a combined best lap time of 2.21.47, over the Westthorp-Winterbottom time of 2.23.33.

That, my friends, is how to be sick in a race car.