Whoops, I said. And whoops indeed. $ 70K's worth of Cosworth engineering: sitting off Sheik Zayed road, in the sizzling shimmering heat, waiting for a recovery truck.

Moments earlier, heading to work, I noticed the water temperature gauge doing something rather silly; reading 91, one degree more than it has ever shown before. Getting a little excited with these new numbers, it started chuffing out some real biggies. And I'm in the fast lane, with nowhere to go, as the needle dive-bombs into the passenger foot-well.

Finally, barging across three lanes of traffic (every form of automobile insistent on using their fog horns in annoyance) I manage to find a safe place to park up. By this time though the yellow riot is making all sorts of funny noises, in a clanking sort of way, and shaving off speed in a startling manner, without any assistance from me or my foot on the middle pedal.

By the time both car and I come to rest, the water temp gauge has been around the clock, most of the hoses have split and there's a weird swirl of steam-like smoke wisping out of the top of the cylinderhead.

'Whoops' makes way for 'what the...?' - and quite rightly so. I quickly got on the phone to Caterham and burbled my apologies for killing their car, only to be faced with surprise - as they thought it would be a simple fix, remedied by a few rubber hoses and some jubilee clips. As I sat, boiling, waiting for the recovery truck, I thought it wasn't even 12 hours ago that I was whooping 260 Cosworth branded Caterham cows down Al Wasel road, now it's all ended in tears - and they are all mine.

As it turned out, it did need some hoses replaced, and some jubilee clips too - and a new head-gasket, and the engine taken out, and the warped head skimmed, and... and... and... and... and.... Needless to say this month has been fraught with worry - a troubled time, full of trepidation and the possible need for an increased overdraft.

But, after being kicked around from garage to garage, the Caterham was finally condensed to a carcass on the floor of Carwise in Al Quoz, with many boxes filling up rather quickly with lots and lots of broken oily bits. It looked hideous, and I did my best not to look as the surgeons dissected the bowels of this beast - laying the contents out on the workbench. I felt so sorry for the car, I really did.

I'm still not convinced it was only the abuse the evo team have given it, whenever there was a free moment in the day, but who knows? And let's not forget, this particular car was previously Cosworth's hot-market test car, so it's been driven hard - no doubt about it.

Good news though: the G7260 made a full recovery, luckily just in time for our Ramadan shootout.