Can a regular person drive a real F1 car?

the g-force is constant in your stomach is three miles down the road I would say that I'm a motorsport fan more than I am a car fan my love for anything with an engine came really from f1 and motorsport so growing up that's what I wanted to be I wanted me an f1 driver wants to be an f1 champion but I ran out of skill and money I like to blame money but it was more realistically skill so that never never really happened for me but I've always been looking for ways to be involved with that sport somehow and so when I left school I went to like all the f1 teams than so many of them based in the UK and I was like to give me a job any job you can't really do that apparently you have to have skills I'll be trained in something and as I ought to sweep the garage floor and so that didn't work out so I went down a different path in life but it eventually ended up working instead of publicity and PR mainly for large events and so that ended up being a few f1 sponsor events so I started to sort of get him involved here and there and again I've got to somehow get involved with f1 I love the sport so much and you know I generally I mean since 1996 I think I've watched every single f1 race to date fine I might skip a few because of things that going on but I watch the full' rerun so I really am NOT obsessed and eventually I quit my job just before YouTube and set up a little PR publicity consultancy and my whole aim was to only do f1 sponsors or f1 related clients and I got a handful but it was all a bit of a disaster and you know so that led to me eventually selling my youtube channel as a hobby as a way to distract myself from my disastrous career move anyway YouTube has somehow allowed me to get closer to f1 than I could have ever dreamt and that came to a head last year when I ended up actually driving an f1 car so this was part of a big campaign I was working on with Infiniti who sponsor of the Renault f1 team and part of the campaign was a customer activation event where they take you to the French Grand Prix circuit and let you drive a 2012 Formula One car now there are plenty of places you can go in the world that you can drive a Formula One car and it's often the shell of a car with a Ford Mustang engine or it's a old 1980s everyone car with four years and seven six and you know they're not real experiences this is as close as a normal human could ever get to driving an f1 car without actually driving an f1 car so it's run by the official Formula One team you go that you have to go through various bits of training the car is running 15,000 RPM instead of 18,000 rpm and six gears instead of seven and it has abs and traction control those are in place because some of the people that get to do this event can literally be people that have never driven anything except their infinity cue whatever so they have to put some safety parameters in place but what I love is that they can dial in and dial out those you know sort of controls depending on the drivers ability so throughout the day you build up to this experience by driving other single seater open wheel cars you also do some laps and some you know North ordinary Road cars even in a van and they should have judged you and so when you get into the f1 car they go okay this guy doesn't need any traction control or this guy needs or the traction control but let's say it would probably arguably be 75 or 80 percent of the real deal and for me for sure is the closest I'm ever again who's driving an f1 car especially given my height you don't get many six foot two Formula One drivers so I had to really wave goodbye to that dream a long time ago so I was so nervous but so excited because I'd say this has been a dream of mine since I was five or six years old and something which I'd probably thought was never actually gonna happen so I go down to France I've got the whole day then the morning it's are going to be the best part of the day because you get put in something called a formula for car which is a junior series of free two series like Indy Lights but turn down even further but the cars are super fun you're in them by yourself you get to 30-minute sessions you're racing against a clock you're not really supposed to be racing other people on track but inevitably you do and you're on a Formula One circuit so you aren't going all-out and then they're like you know back into my karting zone like I was meant to do this but really getting into it and then after lunch is your f1 Drive now you have to be clear it's three laps so the main reason they do this is that after three laps people tend to get cocky or too confident and start driving recklessly but also physically very few people can withstand the g-forces post three laps I have to explain this because I as a fan understand the f1 drivers are athletes most people tend to knock this and go what do you mean they just sit there and drive a car it's nothing about it but you have to realise that they are going through four or five G every single corner on their body on their neck on their arms because the cornering speeds are so high and the braking forces are so extreme so I knew going into the experience the things that we're going to blow me away with the acceleration no doubt it's a car that does nought to 100 miles an hour in two seconds or two-and-a-half seconds potentially the cornering speeds although would I really experience downforce because that kind of break between mechanical grip and aerodynamic grip is so slim in so far you've got to be going like 120 miles an hour plus before you're starting to see the aerodynamics and then the braking a lot of people have said to me the braking is what will blow you away and anyone who hasn't driven a race car before might not know that usually the brake pedal in a race car is like a brick wall it's like the firmest pedal you've ever experienced in your life you have to stamp on it to get any kind of like movement so you get put into the f1 car they sit you down on the seat and you actually lie down in a Formula One car so your your feet are up here your your your hands just doing what's right in front of your face and you can kind of barely see over you to see the tops of the tires and you're kind of lying down it is quite comfortable but a little claustrophobic your feet are in stirrups so that you can't cross on the pedal so your left foot braking and before you're allowed out on the track they say okay can you push the brake pedal for you and I'm ready and I push it pretty hard and they're like no harder harder and I'm pushing like harder to the point where I'm like push myself back into the sea I can hardly breathe and they're like okay that's 75% brake pressure you've got to hit that for every corner or the brakes won't work but I might oh no I can't do that you'll be fine I mean what so in my head I'm like is so terrifying the emotions of the experience everything about it is just so overwhelming that I'm not really taking the moment in so the black time you actually get into drive the car no belted in they start up the engine and they push you out to the pit lane because it's too hard to engage the clutch and you roll away and you're very smooth you have to just let the clutch out real slow and then the car starts to trickle forward not like f1 drivers they obviously help you with that but off you go and of course the initial reaction is the acceleration barbaric I mean like nothing you've ever experienced before take the fastest road car you've ever been and I'm talking about people who've driven laferrari Zhan McLaren centers or whatever you might think Formula One is faster and the biggest thing is its endless I always feel like in a road car there is an acceleration curve no matter how fast you're and even in a Koenigsegg or Pagani after that initial gut-wrenching acceleration it smoothes off in Formula one that doesn't give up you know the g-force is constant and your stomach is three miles down the road until you hit the brakes but I'm kind of expecting that because it's for one right so I've floor the accelerator and I'm like your head's banging around and then I get to the corner and I argue me I'm not doing that fast at that first corner so I turn in and it's unbelievably smooth and easy actually a lot easier to drive than the little formula for cars because of the mechanical grip the mechanical grip is so high that it's John I'm like I'm so good like I'm so good at this flowing through the corners the backs not stepping out I see the straight and I'm like here we go this is it so I just go all the way down to the second gear and floor it and it's the most amazing experience of its feel like being strapped to a rocket ship and I get to the end and all I remember is these sort of voices inside my head going use the brakes you know take a look at people that have text beforehand on my racing driver friends or people that I noticed saying what should I do they say you as that brakes so I'm hurtling towards this first corner and in the formula for car I was breaking the 200 meter mark and I looked down see the 50 meter mark I'm like let's go for it you know what's the worst that's gonna happen it was a big runoff if I die I die in Formula One you know the way I wanted to go so I just going on when I see the 50 meters I push the brake as hard as I can do it my head witness the g-forces takes my helmet and everything down is the cockpit I can't see a thing about God Charlie's shift down gears by the time I can finally lift my head up the corners they're time like turning the corner the whole thing because absolutely like as I say I couldn't I've never experienced something like that and I won't ever again and I finally get back to the pit lane and I get out and the guy goes oh you did a great job you hit 40% brake pressure well done 40 yeah that's pretty good for a first-timer and I'm like how is that 40 percent if the real drivers are hitting a hundred percent every time and it wasn't just the fact that I applied as much leg pressure as as I could like I stamped on that pedal so hard but it was the force as my body went through my lungs will I get the front wheels as I said my head was in while you know not a nice place to be all of it was so overwhelming that my respect for f1 drivers just went through the roof not only their physical ability but the mental capacity to be able to do all of that and be fighting and looking where the opposition aren't speaking to your team and and switching controls it was a completely so a recalibration of what a car could do and the funny thing is is that the team that run the cars on the day say the thing that people struggle with the most with an f1 car is actually how high the idle point is the engines idling around 9,000 rpm and as I say usually they shifted around 18,000 rpm so you're always a that's like forever you roll out the pitch like and people can't get used to it so they let the revs drop too low or they shift too early because you're just aren't used to that higher pitch and all the fluids and everything don't pass through the engine or they get cold and everything dries up and I actually experienced this I was the only person on the whole day to suffer any kind of issue okay I didn't crash but I did have a mechanical issue because obviously this one breaks before I got onto the main straightaway I was trying to see what these brakes would do so I was in like second gear trundling around a corner and I thought I better stomp on the brakes and see what happens so there I go I stamp on the brakes and everything's went and all the revs drops and I was in the wrong gear and the anti stall kicked in so my first metaphoric space and the car does cuts out and you have no pit you have no car to pit radio they can speak to you but you can't speak to them so I'm just free rolling literally around this last call and I see the pit lane I have to roll then got out enough speed back into the pits and everyone soon they're going what's this guy doing like I think I broke it so the only guy the holiday that like screwed up the program given that I was the person most excited and probably should have known that was something you shouldn't do but you just have to keep the revs up you have to keep the energy and everything moving the temperatures up it's a amazing machine in the fact that the only way to drive it is flat-out the minute you leave the pit lane there's no warm-up procedures nothing they've done that for you already with machines and computers so the minute you leave that pit lane you've got to be on it or the cars just gonna give up on you and that was a lesson to learn we'd like to thank Avalon King for their continued support of the VIN Wicky YouTube channel you can go to the link in the description below to get a discount on their armor shield 9 ceramic coating let's go live with Andrew from Avalon King to learn more about their Black Friday special so they're like yeah yeah you're reporting from the field you should do it in an actual field I'm like give me a break yeah yes we're running a Black Friday sale from November 28th to the 30th to get up to 60% off your order if you use the code Black Friday you can see that I'm actually reporting to you from a fee and that's all the time we've got for today thank you Andrew bye

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 4,469,739

Rating: 4.8355689 out of 5

Keywords: Sam Fane, Seen Through Glass, STG, UK, VINwiki, Car Stories, YouTuber, travel the world, automotive, event, insurance, Formula 1, Renault, Infiniti, 2012, F1, testing, brakes, Circuit Paul Ricard, France, Formula Ford, Paul Ricard, Circuit, Track, Travel, pr, public relations, mechanic, clutch, test drive, attempt

Id: BE7mgfwd6M8

Length: 13min 17sec (797 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 27 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/MeconiumMasterpiece]

Top Gear made a similar video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGUZJVY-sHo

[u/Utinnni]

So it's just like a dream where you press the brake as hard as you can but it won't stop the car?

[u/MarthaFarcuss]

This is a great example of someone who's passionate about something being able to captivate people who would otherwise have no interest in that thing

[u/Samuel7899]

"Good job! You managed to get 40% braking."

[u/love2go]

This guy is the best storyteller I've ever seen on that channel. He is so enthusiastic and child-like about racing!

[u/fliptout]

Someone send to Mazepin.

[u/EepeesJ1]

I could never get into formula 1 racing. My dad was really into it and I honestly hated having to watch it instead of my cartoons. I watched the race when Senna passed away, and I remember cheering for Schumacher a lot because his car was so cool. But I never watched the races from start to finish because I'd find something else to do.
This video has me interested just because of how much this guy loves the sport. I had no idea how physically demanding it was and how powerful those drivers must be.

[u/planetworthofbugs]

So does anyone know WHY they make the brake pedal require so much physical pressure? Why not make it a little more sensitive?

[u/WaltDiskey]

Very interesting to hear a normal person talk about driving those cars