[4play]

Originally Posted by MKSixer

Interesting. Were you driving the new-ish F1 car at the edge of the performance envelope? I'm not talking about tooling around at 60 or 70 percent. I'm discussing wringing the last erg of performance from the vehicle.

2011 Williams FW33. Signes was a small lift and back on the power. I had 3 laps in the high 1:11s - the Paul Ricard Club Circuit lap record is Nigel Mansell in a 1990 Ferrari 641 at 1:08. So on a rev-restricted car with old, hard compound slicks, I was probably 5-6 seconds off the pace.

I was definitely not out for a Sunday drive.

Originally Posted by MKSixer

The break away for modern cars is savage. The cars of the past don't do this unless there is an unforeseen change in the coefficient of friction.

Have you driven a modern F1 car? Or are you just saying this based on watching races on TV? It's actually pretty progressive if you aren't being an idiot and mashing the pedal. For a first time driver, the most difficult thing to do lap after lap was to brake hard enough without locking up. You need a ton of pedal force to get the brakes to even work and the pedal travel is about 5mm, so it's difficult to modulate.

Obviously, the V6 Hybrid cars have more torque than the 2.4L cars did, so probably easier to spin them up on corner exit. But the modern chassis are very neutral and communicative (as you would expect).

Originally Posted by SenorFunkyPants

I think you can still rent an old (AGS or something like that) F1 car with about 650hp at Paul Ricard. But its pretty expensive at about 7000 euros for 10 laps.
So its going to cost a small fortune to do enough laps to get comfortable enough to even approach its limit no matter how benign they set up the car for ham fisted amateurs.
Still got to be worth a go though if you were ever in the area.

Probably too much of a tight fit for me at 6 foot.

They have several options. Jaguar R2 with original V10, Prost AP04 and Benetton B198 (both with lower-revving V-8s), an old Williams FW21, and the newer FW33. It's definitely expensive, and the FW33 and R2 are definitely set up more aggressively (less restrictions on revs and slicks) than some of the others, which were on what looked like quite used intermediates. I'm 6'2" and fit in the Williams okay - it was a bit tight to turn the wheel in the last and first 2 corners of the Club circuit and my head was definitely sitting higher than Valtteri, Pastor, or Rubens did that year.

I had 8 laps and the first 4 were just adjusting to the car - the forces (especially braking) are so far beyond anything I had ever experienced and the brakes are quite tricky. Once you get some heat in them and have an idea of what is going to happen when you hit the pedal, it's a little bit easier.