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  Mick Doohan in a HRT drive day car at Queensland Raceway. (Pic: Justin Deeley, inetpics).

OLD racers like Mick Doohan never lose the urge to go fast.

Despite more than a decade since five-times world 500cc motorcycle champion Doohan competed - except for a few tarmac rally car events - the Gold Coast retiree showed a turn of speed in a V8 Supercar yesterday at Queensland Raceway.

The stop watches weren't in action, but current series champion James Courtney observed, "He's not shy, is he?"

"He's really going for it," he said.

Courtney took Doohan for a couple of sighting laps in the HRT drive-day car around the paperclip circuit which included an unintended 360-degree spin at turn two.

"I was showing him my braking markers and he was saying I think I can get to those," Courtney says.

Then it was the motorcycle ace's turn to drive solo.

Doohan declared his short stints "good fun".

"The brakes seem quite good, although they lock up pretty easy," he says. "I locked them a few times testing to see how deep I could go into a corner."

Courtney said Doohan's fused right ankle from his many motorcycle crashes made it difficult for him to modulate the brake pedal.

Doohan's laps included a couple of spins and backing it into the gravel trap at turn six, but it was better than his Formula One test for Williams in 1983 when he crashed into a guard rail at Catalunya, in Spain.

The ex-champ flew his chopper in to the Ipswich circuit yesterday, had two short stints in the car, then flew home a couple of hours later.

His parting thoughts were less about the V8 experience and more about the current MotoGP season which Australian Casey Stoner is leading for Doohan's old factory Honda team.

"He's definitely the one to beat and he seems to understand now that he only needs to keep scoring points and avoid DNFs (did not finish) like he had earlier in the season," Doohan said.

He also predicted that the poor MotoGP grid would pick up in the next few years, tipping that "BMW and a couple of others" would join the series.