Not too long ago I reached another milestone in Birthdays. My wife and friends pitched in to buy me a day of racing in both Formula Renault and Formula 1 cars as an "experience" package with Rajamäki Racing Experience. The fun part was that we had all pitched together to get the same gift certificate for my Best Man on his similar milestone the year before, but due to scheduling conflicts he never used it. So a grudge race was in the makings.
All I can say is, WOW! What an experience! And what a well managed operation. The gang at Rajamäki was fantastic and very thorough in everything they did. As is the way in racing circles, the day went like clockwork, filled with speed, yellow flags, cars into the wall, and every bit of testosterone pumping, adrenaline-junkie excitement you'd expect. This is the story.
Part 1: Good morning and welcome!
We arrived to cheery welcomes and a garage where all of the cars were already unloaded and staring you in the face. Very high cool-factor. Lots of cameras and phones snapping pictures. Must have been a rush of uploads on Facebook in those first 5 minutes. We were ushered into a moving van filled with race suits, shoes, and helmets of various sizes and kitted out. The gear was, thankfully, in fine condition and not dripping with leftover sweat from the days before. And believe me - you sweat. There is a reason you see drivers walking the pits with their overalls off of their upper body and the arms tied around the waste like prison wear.
Once changed we were sent back to our personal cars and told to fall in line behind the team van (driven by Niklas, our coordinator) for a tour of the track. We followed him around the track single-file as he drove the optimal race line, and stopped at key places around the track for briefings and instructions on some of the key corners. Things like - "the asphalt fades away over a hump here. DO NOT ACCELERATE. YOU WILL SPIN OUT. And - "If you brake like a sissy and come out of the straight carrying too much speed - do not try to make the turn. Go thru the cones onto the runout and use the full width of the track to turn around" Lots of safety instructions and tips on how to manage the car and track. You have to understand - the personal deductible for ANY damage is max. $2000 on the smaller F-Renault cars and $5000 for the F1 cars. As Niklas put it, "Nothing on an F1 car costs less than $2000, so you don't want to even tap the wall" (more on that later). So after the rundown on the track we all had 4 laps in our private cars to get a "feel" for the race line and the surface. A very good opener, and you know some of these guys with their BMW Z4, Audi A5, Merceds Benz, etc, were loving it.
Part 3: Formula Renault
Following a short but concise safety briefing in the meeting room where we got more info on the cars themselves, it was down to the track. We were 17 guys this day, divided into equal groups based on size, and assigned to four cars (one car with 5 drivers). Formula Renault is a class of formula racing founded in 1971 and is regarded as an entry-level series before moving on to Formula Three, World Series by Renault, GP2 or Formula One.
These things are like small, uncomfortable bathtubs, formed around skinny little 18-25 year old up-and-comers. So squeezing some slightly "rounder" middle-aged farts into these cars requires two parts contortion and one part "sucking it in". If you've never sat in one of these before its unreal. Your legs slide tightly into the throat of the body, which in my case, was very snug. Somewhere up there at the end I could feel the pedals, which are also very close together. If you had size 14 feet you'd have a very hard time! My shoulders were wider than the cockpit! I couldn't see the fastening point for the harness. And after a summer of laying about in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops, I have to say I was feeling more than a tad bit claustrophobic at first, sweating there in 75 degree heat with racing suit, helmet and gloves on, being buckled into an unfamiliar cockpit made for some kid 30 pounds lighter! But you know what? All of that goes away as soon as you get your push, pop the clutch and get underway.
Part 4: Driving very fast (0-100 km/h in 4sec - Top speed 260 km/h)
There are a lot of rules on the day. For safety reasons and to encourage the "experience" concept, they don't time you. They don't want people racing - they want people having fun driving fast. You ARE allowed to pass but only on the back straight (wouldn't want rubber against rubber with novice drivers). And there was no pace driver during the two F-Renault sessions. So if you're slow you will get a blue flag to let you know to allow traffic to pass. If you're fast - you get to pass! But driving these cars is not your father's Oldsmobile. It ain't your father's Audi or BMW. These things are all torque. You just can't stomp on it. Everything is about balance and that means easing on the acceleration out of the turns. It's also a little trickier since these cars require no clutching when shifting gears on acceleration, but you need to clutch on every downshift. I'll tell you this. I never spun. In fact, I think I was in the top 3 in speed based on garage talk, but there were plenty of guys spinning into the grass and many yellow flags. Fortunately, I never had one during any of my sessions but there was typically one in each. The second driver in our F-Renault car spun out and went across the grass and tapped the wall during the first session. They had to pull into the garage and change out a wishbone arm on the front suspension and fix some other small things. Not at all cool since I was next up and had to wait. That meant that my first 10 minute session was with three other drivers that had already done their first 10 minutes. I held my own. But in the second session I started 4/4 and ended 1/4. (see the shortened 2-lap video below). The grudge race was decided as you can see my Best Man in the black car overshooting at the end of the back straight and turning around. A great warm-up for the main attraction. (see the full 10 minutes if you want here)
Part 5: Driving very, very fast (0-200 km/h in 5sec - Top speed 330 km/h)
What can I say? Well, for starters, there's a lot more room in an F1 than the little F-Renault cars. Maybe 2-3 inches in width! (Yes, that's irony) But you do sit a lot lower and a bit more reclined. This is good as the drag on your helmet is intense even in the F-Renault car. These cars are longer, wider, and heavier but sport 550hp at 12000RPM. And you need to wind them out. The common mistake is that beginners will shift at 5-6000RPM. No. You need to wind them out and get the christmas lights on the steering wheel to light up. Then you get that nice little sonic boom when you shift gears. Oh! So nice! And braking? Don't be a wuss. Stomp on it. Our track was cut short so the back straight was not long enough to really make 6th gear worth while. You would have gone into sixth and dropped down directly. So we never had the room to get these up near there 330km/h top speed. We were topping at around 250km/h (155-160 mph) maybe. But then you had about 150 meters to brake down to 3rd gear and make a 90 degree right turn into a hairpin. Sweeeet! (see my wing mounted GoPro cam) We had Johan Rajamäki driving a F-Renault pace car in front of us on the F1 drive. The instructions were to give him room into the start/finish so we would have room to accelerate and "drive an F1" car. If we were too close then we would be reduced to following an F-Renault. Makes sense. And it was worth it.
Part 6: Conclusion
So I confirmed a few things yesterday. 1) driving fast in a real race car is very cool! 2) I need to lose a few pounds (but I already knew that). 3) It's ok to be on the edge of Old Fartdom and hanging onto the excitement of youth. 4) The price you pay, besides the fee for the day, is the aching and small bruises at key points along your shoulders, back, legs, and arms. I feel like I have had an all-rides pass at the amusement park and been going non-stop for five days. Would I recommend this to a friend? You bet! Would I do it again? Abso-f@$*ing-lutely!
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