It’s hard to tell exactly what is so entrancing about watching a non-Formula One driver in an F1 car. Maybe it’s the Woah, can a person who’s never driven one of these things do it well? Without wrecking? thought, or the fact that the closest most of the human population gets to this view is an online racing simulator.
But the off-limits vibe of F1 cars be damned, because Renault’s F1 program has been letting slightly more normal people get behind the wheel of their race cars lately. Rosemary Smith, a rally driver who was 79 at the time, tore it up in one earlier this year, and recently it was automotive YouTuber Mr JWW’s turn.
Of course, both of them had prior experience in fast cars. Mr JWW’s YouTube account is full of supercars and track outings, but nothing quite like an F1 car. Watching his acclimation to the car and the onboard camera, which starts at around six minutes into the video, is kind of incredible:
Just listen to the scream of that 2012 V8 Renault let him drive. Hopefully some of that sound will be back in F1 soon.
Mr JWW wrote in the YouTube description that driving this thing was “a bucket list moment [he] never even dreamed could make it to the list,” and, um, yeah. That sounds about right.