I dunno, if you don't drive it hard enough, the brakes and tyres cool down and the car won't turn, drive it too hard and you mess up your line, go off track and go on the gravel, brakes and tyres cool down and the car won't turn plus you have bits of gravel in your tyres plus missing bits of aero, drive it just right and the car tries to rip your head off on every corner and rip your organs from their mountings on accelerating/braking.

 

Is that based on playing GT5 or similar?

 

Have to agree, that is funny but Ron knows no limits, which is a great characteristic

Those cars are mental, I just wished he had done another lap, that seemed like a warm up lap, like he wasn't flat out ... awesome video though thanks for posting Jamie.

 

Based on why would you make a car that was difficult to drive? Doesn't matter how fast it is, if the driver isn't confident, he isn't going to go fast

It's only difficult to drive as you approach the limit. There will be a reasonable window of operation that you could happily drive round in.

Like I said, once you overcome the lunacy of the g-foces, your brain would adapt to the speed.

 

You should give McLaren a call Ron.

 

Don't you know? Ron has already turned down all the major F1 teams to pursue a career as a cable plugger.

What we saw with Richard Hammond is probably about accurate. He's obviously a quite good driver all things considered, but couldn't get the tyres or brakes to work well enough to get up any speed to get the tyres or brakes to work. And even if you could, can you imagine what 4G in the corners would feel like? It would be incredibly unpleasant, and I'm sure most of us wouldn't be able to take more than a few corners before having to come in and have a lie down and a cup of tea.

 

Plugging cables is hard work, especially when you have dodgy knees!

Like I said, the g forces are the deal breaker here.

Steve Sutcliffe and Chris Harris have managed the F1 drive and Top Gear is Top Gear so can only be used for data if you work for the Government.

 

Yeah it sounds really easy (9:26)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7XRNJlGNCw&noredirect=1

Sutcliffe and Harris are both reasonably seasoned racing drivers.

I agree with Dembo, Hammond is probably an average driver, but has quite a good experience with speed and chucking things around. I think his F1 car experience is probably accurate.

Personally, I think driving an F1 car having no race experience, and only lukewarm road car experience, would be so far removed from anything you'd ever tried before, it would be a complete waste of time. The speed and g force would be horrific, you would probably tear your neck muscles if you even had the balls to generate the tyre temps to pull those g's though.

Even the worst F1 drivers are bloody driving gods imo.

 

+1

I find it mildly amusing to read critisism of F1 drivers from people that only have experience of track day heroics. These guys RACE, which is a whole world away from a track day as some on here can confirm.They do this in cars that WILL kill you if you get it wrong.

 

Based on why would you make a car that was difficult to drive? Doesn't matter how fast it is, if the driver isn't confident, he isn't going to go fast

It's only difficult to drive as you approach the limit. There will be a reasonable window of operation that you could happily drive round in.

Like I said, once you overcome the lunacy of the g-foces, your brain would adapt to the speed.
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They don't deliberately design the car to be difficult to drive, it just is as a result of the narrow performance window that the tyres and brakes operate in.

As Martin Brundle says in the video linked by MB, if you lose tyre temperature the handling is catastrophic and if the brakes aren't up to temperature the brake pedal feels like something to brace yourself against as you go straight to the scene of an accident.

Fit lower performance tyres that operate effectively from cold and brakes that also work from cold i'm sure a reasonably able driver would be able to make reasonable progress, but that's not what these cars have.