Va-voom! Boris and his tyre-smokin' doughnuts win the racing car vote: QUENTIN LETTS sees Boris get all revved up

Boris Johnson was visiting a racing-car manufacturer near Leeds, West Yorkshire, and jumped into one of the machines. Va-voom. He fired up the V6 engine and drove the £68,000 Ginetta G60 straight out of the factory at a fair old lick.

Oi, stop!

Five minutes later the same car, numberplate G60 YO, came squealing back into the yard and did repeated tyre-smokin’ doughnuts. What we did not immediately realise was that Boris had swapped places at the wheel with Ginetta’s chairman, amateur racing driver Lawrence Tomlinson.

Finally the roadster came to a halt. As the smoke of burnt rubber cleared, a green Boris clambered out of the passenger side to utter the Vote Leave slogan: ‘It’s time to take back control.’

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QUENTIN LETTS: Boris Johnson was visiting a racing-car manufacturer near Leeds, West Yorkshire, and jumped into one of the machines. He fired up the engine and drove away at a fair lick

Boris on the campaign trail is seldom dull. In York’s Parliament Street we had a would-be assailant, a couple of hecklers (‘Rubbish!’) and plenty of support. Several undecided Yorkies had turned out because, as one said, ‘He’s all right, Boris – not that I’m Tory’.

A gooey-eyed Jacky Durrant, 50, self-employed (and married, ahem) extended a hand. Briefly I thought she might slap him. But no. She curled her fingers round Boris’s jaw like a pug-owner fondling her mutt. ‘He’s amazing,’ she said huskily. ‘We need to get out of Europe and stand on our own two feet.’

Philip Poole, 73, from Nottingham, was there with his wife Joy. ‘Boris is trying to give us back what we had,’ he said, referring to political independence.

York University student Sam Grigg, 22, had intended to give Boris something rather messier: A splatted egg.

But Comrade Grigg, quite posh, was persuaded by a Vote Leave steward timidly to dispose of his missile. He threw the egg to the ground, spattering an unimpressed bystander.

s the smoke of burnt rubber cleared, a green Boris clambered out of the passenger side to utter the Vote Leave slogan: ‘It’s time to take back control'

‘This man is just a celebrity,’ shouted Mr Grigg at Boris.

Emma Foster, 40, a secretary, retorted: ‘Unlike you, matey!’ Boris upbraided Grigg for wasting good food.

Mrs Foster, an undecided voter, said: ‘I’m ready to be hypnotised.’ Boris spoke a few words to her and, lo, she did indeed seem slightly dazed by him.

During his stump speech he brandished a copy of the Mail. He may have had it in part to use as a cricket bat if he saw an egg hurtling in his direction but he also quoted approvingly from the pro-Leave article in yesterday’s Mail by Steve Hilton, once David Cameron’s best friend.

Boris on the campaign trail is seldom dull. In York’s Parliament Street we had a would-be assailant, a couple of hecklers (‘Rubbish!’) and plenty of support. Several undecided Yorkies had turned out because, as one said, ‘He’s all right, Boris – not that I’m Tory'

Eggman Grigg had by now lit a peevish cigarette – right next to pub landlord Mark Allinson, 38, and his 11-month-old son, Jack.

A Vote Leave staff member piously told Grigg that smoking next to a toddler was poor form. Mr Allinson himself was more concerned about the EU’s tanking economy.

I must have chatted to about ten onlookers and all but one (a woman just back from the earthquake in Japan – she had had enough upheavals for the time being) were pro-Leave or heading that way. 

The verdict of tour guide operator Matthew Greenwood, 35, will cheer Leave supporters. 

He had always instinctively been pro-EU but was now moving the other way because he was fed up with David Cameron and George Osborne’s hysterical warnings of doom. 

At the Ginetta racing-car factory Boris was greeted by Mr Tomlinson, dressed in polka-dot cravat (I like it!), pinstripe jacket and boot-cut jeans. 

Well hello, girls. 

Mr Tomlinson, one of Britain’s top entrepreneurs, if not fashion dudes, said leaving the EU would not harm his exports one jot. 

The reduction in bureaucratic hassle would help him. In the engine shop all five of the men Boris encountered seemed to be Leavers. 

He was chatting to one of them, Clive, and resorted to an extended engineering simile. Britain staying in the EU would be ‘like putting a Ginetta engine in a long bus which has the wheels of a tractor made of ill-sorted components – and bodging them all together.’