Thursday 24^th August 2006. 

Well, what can I say? I have been watching F1 since about 1973 ... over 30 years I have been looking at the men driving the cars and wondering what it was like, believing it would be something like driving my car twice as fast. Wrong. 

I have never been so exhausted by doing nothing!  Today I was a passenger in a Minardi F1X2 - a two-seater car built with all the parts of a normal F1 car, but with an extra seat squeezed in behind the driver. 

“VIOLENT !” 

That is the word that describes the ride in an F1 car!  Zsolt Baumgartner is a good driver, and he was probably at 90% of his capabilities (we were touching between 250 and 275 kph) and we were travelling around Hungaroring. 

As we left the garage, I was excited and everything was happening in slow motion - the burst of sunlight, the people guiding us out, the other guys taking photos of me, and then “Wham!” the seat tried to go through me and we were off... heading towards the green light of the pit lane exit.

As we left the pit lane, “Wham!” again the seat and the car tried to go down the course and leave me behind, thankfully I have enough mass to stop that happening and the car was forced to take me with it. My ride of a lifetime had begun. 

As they strap you firmly into the seat, it feels like someone is sitting on your chest, but when you hit the first corner and the brakes come on, you are very glad of it indeed. As Zsolt hits the brakes, you fire forward - well at least your insides and your head do - the rest of you is firmly restrained by the thick strapped six-point harness. Now it feels like you are being pulled backwards by Superman.

It is really unbelievable how you slow down ... from so fast to just ‘fast’. Taking the corners at 100 kph you wonder how on Earth the car is still on the track. How do the tyres stick so well? Corner after corner, the brakes catch you out, and the acceleration winds you. Getting onto the straight is such pleasure because although it’s the fastest part of the track, there is only tiny g-forces acting on you. Now you can breath, now you can relax, and then “Wham!” he is braking again. 

Braking is like hitting a brick wall, no gentle increase in braking force as we are all taught in our car skills, no - all or nothing, that’s how F1 brakes work. All around the course, you are either braking or accelerating. Except for the straight. The view from behind Zsolt was excellent, you hardly notice that there is a head rest in front of you. I was looking left and right in and around the corners, trying to guess the line he would take. You know he is pushing it when you hear the tyres screeching, and feel the rumble strip. A few times, I felt the back of the car step out and be corrected almost as soon as I knew it was happening. Lightning reflexes ... he has lightning reflexes. 

I was doing four laps, one ‘slow’ out lap, two ‘flying laps’ and one in lap (this was no slower than the flying laps though. I am glad that there was no radio in my helmet, because I was swearing hard. You cannot help but swear. The forces acting on you are forces that I have never experienced before. I was hard against one strap. then hard against the next. I was hard against the back rest then straining at the front of the harness. Imagine you are in the back of your friends car, and  three people are leaning against you as hard as they can going around a corner as fast as the driver can ... it feels a bit like that. 

You are going around a race track that only a few days ago you were watching on the TV. You recognize parts, but you soon become lost, but then you are passing your friends on the pit wall and the next lap starts. I wish I could write a few magic words that would leap off the screen and you could feel exactly what I felt in that car, I wish I had the strength to take a good video of the lap, but I don’t.

So hopefully it will suffice to say that as a very self-confident driver, advanced motorcycle instructor and 30-year armchair F1 driver, I can categorically admit that I wouldn’t be able to race an F1 car. I would never be able to concentrate amongst all that violence, and I would not enjoy the physical punishment each lap delivers. 

To every F1 driver I have ever criticised for bad driving, I apologize. Even on their worst day, they are better drivers than I will ever be able to pretend to be. 

To Taku, Sakon, Franck and Yuji, my admiration - how do you guys do it?