Thread: Has Anyone Ever Drove Or Ridden In A F1 Car?

I was just curious if we had any drivers on the forum or if anyone had the opportunity to take a ride in an F1 car. I won the opportunity to do a ride around the track with a Nascar driver once. Of course, I don't know that there would be room for something like that in an F1 car.

I'm not a pro driver and I've never been in a pro car. When I was a kid, I drove a go kart off of the course and I think that left me with a fairly high level of caution for things like that.

I have enjoyed seeing some Indy cars up close but that's as close as I've come to getting involved.

Not me, and in fact, you couldn't pay me enough to get in one of those things. They are just way too dangerous in my opinion. Those cars will never have the safety of a stock car, no matter what they do.

Why would you think a Nascar car is safer, and an F1 car is more dangerous....As F1 fans have seen there are accidents that look like someone would surely be injured, however, the safety designs of the cars protect the drivers quite well...One thing that comes to my mind regarding safety is the probable fact that F1 drivers are more physically fit than Nascar drivers, this may play a minor role if or when an accident occurs. I think the F1 car is probably more difficult to drive to its limits, versus the Nascar vehicle...
Just my opinion....

Has anyone seen the episode of "Top Gear" where Hammond gets to drive the Renault F1 car? Hammond has clearly had some training and experience in high performance driving. But, he was basically unable to drive the car. At all. The reason F1 cars are so dangerous for anyone but a top level driver with experience in top-level single seaters:
- The brakes DON'T WORK unless they're hot. To get them hot, you have to be driving at something like 80% of a competitive lap time.
- Similarly the tires have NO GRIP unless they're hot. Again, unless you can immediately push the car to 80%, you are SOL.

You CAN'T drive the things slowly and carefully and work up to speed.

They had to push Hammond back into the pit box and put the tire warmers back on because he took so long getting the feel of a standing start, the tires cooled off too much to be safe.

Maybe a NASCAR is similarly impossible to drive slowly, I don't know.... but I doubt it.

Heck no but I can say there is not doubt in my mind, it would be fun, but I doubt I have the proper training for something like that. Take about taking a large leap of faith.

I've done a couple of laps in a Formula Ford, that was strange enough, considering everything I've raced up to that point always had doors and fenders. I have to honestly admit that I did not really enjoy it a whole lot, for one thing the regular driver was about 3 inches taller than me so it was not easy to get a good feel for the car and you can't adjust the seat in a FF