Could YOU Drive a Formula 1 Car?

could you drive an f1 car say tomorrow we took you to a track and presented a modern formula one car to you could you do a few laps would you even be able to pull away or would you take lewis's seat for next year well i used to work on events with lotus f1 now alpine f1 and winfield racing school where we'd put people who'd never been on track in a 2012 formula one car but what i really want to talk about is how difficult is it for a non-racing driver to actually drive a formula one car what are the biggest challenges and how far are they off the pace back before i started drive 61 and driven media i was racing and coaching and one of the jobs i had was working with the winfield racing school based at the paul ricard circuit in france they work with the alpene f1 team to put on probably the best driving experience in the world driving a 2012 f1 car that's the car that kimmy drove when he did his leave me alone speech before going on to win the abu dhabi grand prix the f1 team would bring their sponsors and guests to drive the car most of whom had never touched a race car let alone driven an f1 me and my fellow coaches worked with people like david croft seeing through glass mr jww and matt from wtf1 among many other non-racers imagine that being invited to drive a formula one car for the first time and from what i could tell they felt an equal measure of excitement and nervousness i actually spoke to matt creed who took part in the program a few years ago having only ever done a few driving experiences on track previously but before we get into it we need to thank today's sponsor honest the makers of alpha brain it's a brilliant dietary supplement that helps support cognitive functions things like memory mental speed and focus all the things you need when you're driving on track there's so much information to process you're constantly making decisions on when to brake turn and accelerate and processing how the car handles that i need to be focused every time i 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around the circuit to control their speed a little show them the racing lines and give coaches an opportunity to assess their driving things like how well they are braking how smooth their inputs are and how they're getting on the throttle and it might seem a little bit pedestrian but learning to control these things is the first challenge imagine that bill if one of these people stuck a car in the barrier at term one just because they missed the breaking point next session the drivers are out again in the f4 cars but this time by themselves again the coaches were watching at each corner to ensure the drivers have the smoothness required for the f1 car for them this would be getting the hang of left foot braking using the paddle shifters and recalibrating their sense of what sort of g-force a car is capable of after the two f-4 sessions the guests have a sleep fit in the f1 car and then it's time to drive i remember their faces when the engineers fire up the engine it's all silence and then boom you're deafened by that v8 yeah when the engine started off i mean it was a very surreal moment i mean the the vibrations as well and just the noise it's like it's the breathing thing formula one car i could always see the excitement and the nervousness in the driver's eyes before we sent them on the way let's not forget that this f1 car may be nearly 10 years old but it's still an absolute weapon kilograms over 800 horsepower and very sticky slick tyres and that leads me to the first challenge just pulling away pretty easy to do with your foot in a manual road car a little harder in an f1 first there's no foot clutch it's all hand operators as you will have seen on tv the hand clutch itself is tricky it has a normal spring behind it so there's no feeling the biting point and there's very little travel meaning being smooth is difficult at first i went to pull away and nothing was happening whatsoever so i was trying to engage the gear letting out the clutch i think it was on the left hand side if i can remember on your fingers and you're just trying to be so calm but you're also filled with adrenaline in the nerve let that clutch out so slowly like let it out like you're moving it moving out like millimeters at a time just just so it's as smooth as possible as it's all done with electronics you can program how sensitive the clutch paddle is compared to the slave cylinder at various points through the release and so as getting the perfect launch wasn't necessary for a normal person the clutch was mapped to be more gentle around the biting point allowing for better control most drivers would be able to pull away on their very first attempt and so off they went wide-eyed down the pit lane at paul ricard the next challenge is actually not going too slow the hydraulic systems on a formula one car are driven off the engine and so when the engine speed is too low with too few rpm the hydraulic pressure suffers that in turn can create issues with gear shifting as there's not enough hydraulic pressure to shift and so the car will actually shut down if the rpm goes too low for too long so imagine you're sitting in an f1 car for the very first time and you need to go reasonably fast otherwise the car will turn itself off one of the main issues here is that this 2012 lotus would rev to 15 000 rpm and most people's ears aren't tuned to let in a car rev that high drivers would change up way too early and change down way too late causing the issue with low rpm luckily these cars have live car to pit telemetry so the team and i could watch the rpm and radio the drivers to remind them to delay an upshift or make a downshift okay so once you're able to keep the rpm high enough what's next you have to brake for a corner but you're only used to 0.5 over g when braking on the road and these cars are capable of 5g but braking hard isn't just needed for performance it's actually needed for the brakes to work properly as you likely know f1 brakes are made from carbon fiber and work best above 700 degrees celsius when they're cold and we call anything below 400 degrees cold they're pretty much useless push the pedal hard and they do very little and they're even worse if you press them with the same pressure you'd use in a road car the brakes are a critical part of the whole f1 ecosystem aside from stopping the car the heat they create radiates into the wheels and then into the core of the tyre again this is important as cold f1 tyres just don't give any grip i can remember i think going after the first mate over for the pit strike i went to break probably where i was breaking the formula for by going probably a little bit faster in the formula one car and that's what was the most amazing thing i think of before the one car the brakes it's something that i would never never forget just touching and just stumping on those brakes how quickly it stopped that's the thing what really stands out for me but the core of the issue here was that regular drivers just weren't strong enough to push the brake pedal hard enough and even if they were an athlete and had strong legs and managed to slow the car down quickly it's likely their neck wouldn't be able to cope with the braking force it's the most common things that drivers talk about after driving an f1 car for the first time you feel the force through your whole body but particularly in your neck the average human head weighs about 5.5 kilograms add a 1.2 kilogram helmet to it and multiply that by 5g and you have 33.5 kilograms of force acting on your neck and that's just the breaking in this video i'm taking my wife around a track in a radical which can produce around 3g she's a normal person fit and healthy and look at her head moving around but the biggest challenge is one of fear people are unsure of just how fast the car will really go f1 cars are obviously incredibly fast they look fast on the tv they look faster in real life and they feel much faster when you're strapped in one how is it possible to comprehend how hard you can hit the brakes how fast you can enter the corner and how much you can hit the accelerator in all honesty the drivers who'd not been on track before were a long way off the pace of course they were but that isn't the point of an experience like this the point is to enjoy the experience and where they were actually closest to the limit of the f1 car was in acceleration down the straps most drivers managed to get to full throttle and experience full power of the f1 car pulling quickly through the gears the highlight for most of them was hitting 180 miles an hour down the back straight and turning into the fast right hander at scene now they weren't flat like the current cars but most likely pulling around 3g which even to someone who has raced a lot feels absolutely crazy and so to answer the question can a regular person drive an f1 car yes they certainly can however driving it quickly anywhere close to the limit is a different story do you even know how close you were were there any moments when the car slid or you always below the performance of the car so i know full well i didn't even come close to the limit of the formula one car and even if you could take them out and show them what the car was capable of exactly where the limit of grip was their fear would hold them back it takes a lot of practice to trust the car and trust yourself to control it but even if they could do this their neck wouldn't handle the g-force without a fair bit of training if you enjoyed this video please be sure to subscribe to the driver 61 channel as we're very close to 700 000 subscribers and check out these other videos which we think you'll love

Channel: Driver61

Views: 117,483

Rating: 4.9510593 out of 5

Keywords: Formula 1, Driving, Coaching, Motorsport, Engineering, F1, Racing, Incredible Motorsport, Driver61, Paul Ricard, Driving F1, Winfield Racing School, Driving Experience, David Croft, Crofty, matt gallagher f1 car, Seen Through Glass, f1 car, how to drive an f1 car, driving an f1 car, sky sports f1, sam fane

Id: cTrnRQLaimc

Length: 10min 54sec (654 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 18 2021