Autosport News Review

For many of my younger years I had sat watching Formula One drivers tearing their way around the world’s most demanding stretches of tarmac. And, for most of those years I had said to myself: “I could do that. What’s the big deal about driving a car round and round a circuit?”

On a dull March morning several years back, I found out exactly what the big deal was, and let me tell you it is bigger than big… it’s enormous. Driving in a Formula One car is neither easy nor much fun… it simply hurts.

I was among a lucky few invited to attend an Orange Arrows test day at Donington Park racetrack in the UK and at that session was the two-seater Arrows F1 car, driven by a then aspiring and relatively unknown test driver called Mark Webber.

When you are going to do three laps at terrifying speed it is not as simple as just turning up and hopping in the car for a spin. On arrival at the circuit I was taken straight to the course medical centre where a doctor was waiting to test my “vitals” to ensure that I wasn’t likely to expire under the exertions that car, track and Webber would place on me.

At this point the alarm bells should have started ringing, along the lines of “what…? I could die out there?” But, with my eyes on the bigger prize (bragging rights mixed with a healthy dose of ego inflation), the bells were silenced, and after a half hour attached to tubes and beeping machines monitoring everything from my lung capacity to how much phlegm was at the back of my throat (don’t ask…), I was declared fit enough to take my place in the back seat of a Formula One motor-racing car.

Webber … blocks his ears at a Red Bull testing session. Reuters

Having been taken to the team’s motor home and fitted out with my (orange) jumpsuit and those funny little felt boots the drivers wear when racing, I was taken to the pits for final briefing. The first thing you notice when you walk into the pits is how loud the engines are.

Everyone has earplugs, and for good reason. Not only is it loud, but it is an aggressive high pitch loud, almost like your whole body is being subjected to a dentist’s drill attacking an oversized mosquito.

I was given a helmet (heavy) and introduced to my chauffeur (Mark Webber) who seemed somewhat underwhelmed to be driving punters around a damp and misty Donington circuit. Maybe he too was eyeing the bigger prize which he would soon get his hands on … a full-time drive with another constructor.

I was given a few last minute instructions, like “you will be cramped” or “when you hit a bend don’t fight the g-force” or ” if you dribble, you won’t be able to wipe it off, so don’t try” and I was then helped into the car and strapped (uncomfortably) to my passenger’s seat.

“ –The physical exertion of sitting still had turned my lower body to jelly and I was suddenly and very welcomely being supported by my minders and dragged away from the car.– ”

And so to my original point of “how hard can it be? I could do that driving thing, no problem.” From the moment we left the pits and accelerated from 0-200 km/h in a breath, all thoughts about the simplicity of this job were, quite literally wiped from my mind.

Let me tell you, once the g-force gets hold of you, you are slave to the car and it will dictate the shape, feel, reaction and basic functions of your body. Heading in to the first corner and dropping from 200 to 80 km/h I was determined to keep my head straight. Before we had even hit the apex of the bend, my skull was thrown sharply right and the dribble started flowing from the corner of my mouth.

As Mark Webber floored it out of the turn and into a short undulating straight, my head was whipped back front on and my dribble shifted from the corner of my mouth to the middle, leaving me with an uncontrollable torrent flowing down my chin.

It was at that moment I realised I was probably an inch too tall for this particular vehicle… there was a securing metal cross-strut digging in to the cartilage under my right knee and it hurt like hell. No, I mean it really, really hurt.

Up a rise, down a dip at well over 250 km/h, my head was spinning (literally), spray from the wet track was covering my helmet visor, my knee was in agony, my neck was already stiffening up, my chin was soaked with my g-force-induced dribble. In short, I had been rudely and swiftly brought to the realisation that this game was not easy, that I could never and would never want to do it full-time… this was a young man’s game and I felt decidedly old.

Webber … gets out of the restrictive head gear. Reuters

The rest of the three laps was a blur, both because of the incredible speeds we were reaching in the home straight (290 km/h and more), and because I was focusing on not passing out from the pain in my knee.

The one image that still haunts me was on lap two when we came up a fairly sharp rise doing about 220 km/h was another testing car had stopped, mid-track and we were tearing towards it. Without even flinching, chauffeur Mark flicked his wrists right and left and the stationary vehicle flew by in a terrifying blur of track spray and, I am sure, some more of my dribble.

Back safely, if in some pain, in the pits, we jolted to a halt and the crew came to help me out. There were two burly blokes waiting to lift me out of the seat.

I tried to be all nonchalant about it, hey, I’d just completed the experience, what could be wrong? I needed both of my helpers. They knew it and I did too when I put one foot on the ground and both my legs simply gave way under me. The physical exertion of sitting still had turned my lower body to jelly and I was suddenly and very welcomely being supported by my minders and dragged away from the car.

Which only went further towards confirming my original misapprehension: driving a Formula One car is not easy, you or I could not simply take it up as a hobby. It is possibly the most physically draining experience I have ever had.

Adrenaline and g-force are brutal enemies and they will mess with your whole physical being, however tough you think you are. The only really positive thing once I was out of the car was that, at last, I wasn’t dribbling any more.