The trouble with driving an F1 car… okay, there are various: 1) Its not yours 2) You dont have any idea where the brink are, and 3) It costs not just more than your property, but greater than all the houses with your block. So in case youre driving it with a track which doesnt have a mile as well as a half of runoff, you happen to be not likely to hang the tail out.
But we hung the tail out anyway. What the heck, right? It went back.Lets back a little: First of, most of us agree that F1 is cool, right? The cars represent the pinnacle of technical performance. There is nothing faster around a road course when compared to a Grand Prix car. If you are scanning this magazine/website, you grew up attempting to be a great race car driver. You might even get out of bed at four each day to watch the Grand Prix of wherever-the-heck, regardless of whether its broadcast in German or French or Japanese simply because you just love the concept that these are the be st cars on this planet and the guys from the cockpits can beat anyone else anywhere. But the understanding of driving an F1 car yourself never entered your head. Its like dating Kate Upton or becoming the president. Somebody is/does however it is not ever destined to be you.
Well now it could possibly be you (the driving, anyway), and then for less than the expense of a used Hyundai Sure, an excellent used Hyundai, nevertheless the price wont place you out on the path. A company called GP Experience will grant you three laps within a real, live F1 car for under $6995, or $9995 in order to drive at Circuit with the Americas Thats almost reasonable. A guided climb of Mt. Everest costs $65,000 and take two months within your life. A short flight to your edge of space can cost you $250,000 and you also might not return in one piece. This GP Experience is pretty cheap as opposed to runners other thrill-of-a-lifetime deals, and it is run and done in a very day.
And w hat each day it is.
Renault R26 at speed.The average GP Experience day starts, just like F1 careers, in karts. You race around in karts for a time after getting a chalk discuss understeer, oversteer but not hitting the wall using beautiful and expensive F1 car. This is as well as laps in whatever supercar they happen to have available. We experienced a Lotus Evora, but GP Experience lists on its website the Ferrari 458 , McLaren MP4 12c , Porsche Turbo and Infiniti G50 Eau Rouge (No offense, but praygod you do not get the Infiniti G50 Eau Rouge.)
Then they feed you lunch. After lunch, or sometimes before, you may even get some laps riding within the side pod of any three-seater Formula 1 car, or what they have to call an F1x3 car. This is an interesting experience. A professional sits inside the drivers seat while two passengers ride within the side pods like saddle bag beef. We rode within the side pod while professional driver and sports ve hicle championship winner Didier Theys manhandled the three-seater around The Thermal Club ( The Thermal Club is really a really fun handful of race tracks that may one day, hopefully, whenever they get the many permits, turn into a full-blown motorsports club with condos and private pools. Its located out inside the desert east of Palm Springs). They strap you in tightly on your sidepod seat but also in ours there was only lap and shoulder belts, no crotch strap.†As a result, if you do not find somewhere to brace you, your carcass does submarine in to the footwell as the rest of you gets somewhat car sick. Better to be driving.
The best thing regarding the sidepod ride was seeing where Theys got about the brakes, slowed for corners, then completed and got back for the gas. It turns out even F1 cars have limits.
Its only a car,†Theys said later. And ultimately, it turned out. Just much more.
After everything you are ready to operate a vehicle.< br />
GP Experience had only one car on-hand manufactured we were there. No one appeared to be sure exactly which F1 car that it was. The invitation as well as the paint scheme sure managed to get seem like wed be driving Kimi Raikkonens E20 Lotus where the Flying Finn took third place on the globe championship in 2012. Later, it seemed the vehicle wed drive would be a 2006 Renault (or perhaps 2005 Renault), painted to appear like Kimis Lotus. Then they said they can ask someone at LRS Formula in France, with whom GP Experience is partnered. LRS has become letting average Joes and Jacques drive F1 cars in Europe for many years. Now, when winter hits Europe, GP Experience will run the cars inside U.S. Eventually we ended up semi-confirmation that your vehicle is a 2006 Renault chassis That would mean it could have been driven by either 2006 champion Fernando Alonso or his Renault teammate Giancarlo Fisichella. No one was entirely certain.
Renault R26 leaves the pit s Regardless, one on the most interesting reasons for an F1 car would be the sheer number of guys it requires to keep it going plus in tip top shape. There were three real F1 mechanics plus a whole squadron of support personnel. Our 2005/2006 Renault a Peugeot V10 it because Renault will not likely let GP Experience use its engines because of this. The car includes a sophisticated paddle-shifted transmission massaged by McLaren to really succeed for mere mortals to shift. If you dont upshift or downshift ought to, the McLaren shifting algorithm does that task for you. There might happen to be Pirelli guys onhand, too, since the automobile ran on real Pirelli F1 tires. Peak output with the Peugeot V10 the way it sits with this Renault chassis is listed at 620 hp. So you go about doing have to ease on top of the gas.
You climb in to the thing and very soon everyone in the track in every capacity has gathered around it. A drive of the F1 car is often a pretty big issue anywhere on this planet, even just to see. Thus everyone in the chief instructors towards the guy assisting together with the catering was gathered around, perhaps to ascertain if this driver/poseur would stall.
Ha! He would not! The clutch will be no problem, said the French-speaking mechanic, in Franglais. At least that is what we thought he explained. He kept making hand and arm signals of the we think became a clutch pedal along with a gas pedal. One went up, another down.
Just before they started the engine we hung a hand outside of the cockpit and spun an index finger inside the air, in the same way wed watched real F1 drivers practice it in Europe in the past. We were getting the full experience.
Once it fires, your work as driver is usually to rev the engine many times. Waaaaa! Waaaa! Waaaa! Thats fun.
Then you place off. The clutch was, indeed, very easy to operate coupled with been modified to become proficient for ave rage humans to utilize. We didnt stall, which little doubt disappointed a variety of media colleagues who had been onhand.
Leaving the pits your vehicle hesitated somewhat. We desired to launch down pit row, however the car wasnt responding. Regardless, we had been following instructor Didier Theys, who has been driving a Lotus Evora with the first lap. If we managed to get around the primary lap in decent enough style and Theys thought we had arrived safe enough about driving this car wed be allowed to leave unsupervised.
Even behind the pace car, the initial lap wasnt slow. Theys was hammering that Lotus for all that it was worth. We were smooth going in to the corners, following a line Theys had suggested earlier when he previously had us drive an Evora as he sat inside passengers seat. He suggested a sharper turn-in than organic beef have used, and several trail braking, which we also might not exactly have used.
You cannot allow it to be underst eer,†said Theys.
You can, however, ensure it is oversteer, and pretty easily. So we eased into the gas at each and every exit, while Theys hammered the Evora. Likewise, we didnt trust the braking points. Sure, we knew this car, using its carbon ceramic brakes, could stop superior to anything wed ever imagined, but our brain really didnt believe it.
Whats the situation with you, you stinking wimp?†said the small devil figure on our right shoulder.
Dont crash, well get hollered at!†said the angel on our left shoulder.
We balanced the 2 main voices out and after that lap one was over and we had been waved past on Thermals front straight. The right shoulder guy won out so we hammered the throttle. Waaaaaa! Waaaaaaaa! Waaaaa! A group of lights about the steering wheel notifys you when to shift: three greens a red. You shift with the red by pulling up about the right paddle. You downshift by pulling for the left paddle as you get into c orners: bwaaaaaammmmm, bwaaaaaammmmm, bwaaaaaammmmm! Its just as if you might imagine it truly is, only much more… and somewhat less.
Ultimately it drove as being a larger, more efficient formula-whatever-youve-already-driven. The tires were bigger, the engine would be a lot bigger, plus the weight was greater. The problem was pushing it problematical enough to probe virtually any limit - within your first three laps within an F1 car you cannot possibly learn how fast to travel, so you certainly shouldnt exceed the automobiles grip, regardless how massive. So while Theys had said going to the brakes hard in the number 5 braking denote get as often heat into them as it can be, there we were easing onto them at number 7. (He later admitted that she was hitting them at braking point 3.) And while Theys said to travel into corners definate, that the auto wouldnt understeer, we had been still well below the Renaults chance to hold to the track, gently approaching the interes t rate Theys carried when i was riding saddlebag inside F1x3.
So while i was going fast, we had been not on the limit. Nor anywhere near it.
If wed had another three laps we will have hammered harder. As it absolutely was we did get oversteer exiting considered one of Thermals second-gear hairpins. We caught it by countersteer and also by easing off of the gas before powering off around the short straight. A subsequent fellow media hack did a similar thing, didnt catch it, spun, and was unceremoniously escorted back towards the pits. Everyone elses next day that was spent behind the pace car for all those three laps. Ha! Suckers! We got two unrestrained laps!
But be the thing: Even in the event youve just dropped 10 grand on the credit card, they is not going to hesitate to finish your session right then and there in the event you spin. If youre a paying customer they are going to talk you through it and explain the way you should get it done better so youre able to go back out and have your three laps. If youre a freeloading car writer like us they only end your session. We didnt want - nor did we obtain - that ignominy.
But we still desired to get the three laps with a few sense from the capability of the car. With more time a person certainly might have experienced more with the braking and more from the lateral gs. As it had been, yes, this is pretty thrilling, but no, that it was nowhere at the limits from the car. Who jumps into an F1 car to the first time in their lives and is immediately in the limit? No one, thats who.
Which may be the idea. Your first shot of whatever drug is provided for free, remember? Its there after, when you are addicted, that you start to pay. To that end you will find called the GP Drivers Club. If you complete the GP Experience for $6995 (or $9995), that you are automatically inside GP Drivers Club, which you could spend $13,995 for ten laps at Circuit in the Americas - t wo group of three laps and among four. If youve done everything right, some laps at the conclusion of your ten-lap day can be had inside the real 2012 Lotus E20, the car where Kimi Raikkonen finished third from the championship. You ought to know the way to left-foot brake to operate a vehicle that car understanding that takes some time along with a few more laps. But they are very happy to sell you more laps.
If you are inside the right income bracket, this can be the perfect Christmas present for your F1-addicted spouse. Call or select Tell ‘em Kimi sent you.
Mark Vaughn - West Coast Editor Mark Vaughn covers all car things west from the Mississippi from his Autoweek lair high higher than the LA metropolis.
