Some you’ve got understeer, some you’ve got oversteer, some the car gets light, so you have to be on your game. The history always plays a part of it as well, looking back at some of the Formula One accidents there you respect it a whole lot more.
“It was definitely a good experience, I remember that night when the race finished I couldn’t move at all, everything was sore, it was just crazy! I did eight hours all up, one single stint and four double stints, so it was quite intense but I really enjoyed it and hopefully it will be the first of many Spa trips.”
Still in the early stages of his career – the same age as Bathurst 1000 winner Chaz Mostert and just a few months older than Kiwi sensation Scott McLaughlin – Muscat has plenty of time on his side as he approaches the career-defining choice that many of his countrymen have faced.
There is undoubtedly a promising future in international GT racing ahead of him, should he choose to pursue it, but the lure of becoming the next Lowndes or Jamie Whincup in the high-profile V8 Supercar championship is an undeniably tantalising prospect.
“They are very unique beasts,” Muscat said after sampling Will Davison’s Erebus Mercedes-Benz AMG E63. “I was talking to Shane van Gisbergen in New Zealand and he was saying that even for Jeroen Bleekemolen it took a few goes at the Supercar to get on the pace straight away – yet he can jump into a Viper, the SLS or whatever and he’s always super quick.
The biggest thing to get used to is the braking and the throttle application; you’ve got to maximise the pressure then bleed off as quickly as possible so it doesn’t pinch the fronts, but you’ve still got to have the pressure on the nose to get the car to turn in because it understeers quite a bit. Then you’ve got to feather the throttle a bit more because the tyre size is half what we’ve got on the GT car with 100 more horsepower and no traction control, and it goes away quickly if you get a little bit of wheelspin - which is easy to do when you’ve got 750-800 horsepower!”
It’s not a decision to be made lightly. As the recent struggles of European exports Alexandre Premat, Maro Engel and Robert Dahlgren have shown, mastering V8s is no easy feat and, as Muscat himself points out, with only 24 slots on the grid, sponsorship will play a typically pivotal role.
For now, Muscat is hedging his bets. After two podium finishes in a one-off Porsche Carrera Cup GB outing at Snetterton, his next step will be taking on Australia’s equivalent championship against strong opposition including 2014 champion and three-time Bathurst winner Steven Richards, which he hopes will help his prospects of landing a co-driver seat come the endurance season at Sandown, Bathurst and the Gold Coast.
“It will probably be a busy year next year!” he laughs. “Carrera Cup Australia is our main priority, it’s kind of like a half-way house between Supercars and GT and if you can drive a Porsche you can basically drive anything. The Porsche championship this year has been just as competitive as V8 Supercars, there’s around eight or nine guys who can win it every weekend and next year should be even stronger again. Hopefully next year will be a good year, but as for the future who knows? Whether it’s V8 Supercars or GT racing, I’ve got experience in both cars now, so let’s see what happens.”
If his dominance of the Australian GT championship is anything to go by, wherever his fuure lies, Richard Muscat is certainly a name to keep an eye on.