Now as I'm sure you know anyone can go buy a Tennis Racket if they want to have a go at Tennis. Similarly you can go buy a Football and have a kick about if you want to have a go at bending it like Beckham. But if you want to overtake cars like Hamilton then you're a bit stuck. You can't just go down to your local sport shop and buy a F1 car. You could go to a local Kart track and have a go but a Go Kart, fun though it may be, isn't an F1car. To have a go at F1 you have to be an F1 driver and only 24 people in the world ever get to have a go at that a year.
Lotus clearly thought that was unfair and made the T125 for ordinary people who don't race in F1. Well ordinary people who happen to be millionaires. It is powered by a 650bhp 3.5 litre V8 Cosworth engine. This engine is linked to a six speed semi automatic paddle shift gearbox, like the ones in F1 only with one less gear. I don't know how fast it hits 60 or what it calls its top speed but with just about 1,000bhp per tonne the figures aren't going to be unimpressive. Real F1cars with around 800 horses can do 60 in 1.9 seconds apparently so for this Lotus I'd expect 2.3 to be a realistic figure, 2.1 if you get the start right. Top Speed? 190mph.
But with F1 cars the straight line speed isn't the most impressive part of what they do. The cornering ability of an F1 car is so phenomenal a normal persons neck muscles would be absolutely shot to pieces after three laps. The cornering Gs are such that even F1 drivers struggle at the infamous Turn Eight at Turkey. The reason behind the staggering cornering ability lies in the aerodynamics. The downforce an F1 car produces effectively triples the cars weight. So why couldn't an Audi saloon do what an F1 car does then? The thing is the weight of the Audi pulls the thing out of line in a corner as well as pushing it into the track which means that the tyres become overworked to quickly. An F1 car only has 550kgs pulling it out of line and 1,550kgs pushing it into the track which means the tyres grip but don't deform due to the sideways force being exerted on them. The Lotus T125 produces the same amount of downforce as the F1 cars from six years ago, apparently. This means it has more downforce than the F1 cars of today. This makes cornering, well, staggering and neck killing. In other words, F1 like.
This lack of weight also makes a difference in the braking zones. Without so much momentum behind it the Lotus, like a real F1 car only needs 100metres to brake from its top speed to 50mph. The ironic part to that is you have to do brake at those distances because if you don't you lose temperature in the brakes and then you don't stop in that distance. It's the same story with the tyres. You have to corner as fast as the downforce makes possible to keep temperature in the tyres because if you don't then as soon as you go too slow for the downforce to start working you have no grip and crash and lock the brakes up and have a bigger crash.
This really is the problem with having a go at F1. Normal people drive normal cars that don't do what F1 cars do. They don't have that singularity of purpose to go fast like an F1 car does. This means that normal drivers go at speeds that are safe in normal cars. Doing those speeds in the Lotus is dangerous because it has to be driven fast to work. Just in the same way a Nissan Micra won't work when travelling at 190 the Lotus won't work travelling at 60. Normal drivers just aren't equipped mentally to drive cars like this. Nor physically but that can be amended easily.
To help with the mental side of things Lotus sells you not only the car and a team of engineers to set it up for you when you want to drive it but they also throw Jean Alesi in as well to help you drive it at the speeds it needs to go to work. It's quite a package. A F1 car mockup, a engineer team and Jean Alesi. Thing is it comes at a price, £650,000 to be exact. You don't get to keep your car either. Lotus keep it and then transport it to your destination for you, wherever that may be. There is also the Exos experience now. This is where a number of grand prix drivers teach you how to drive like a racing driver.
Consider this though. This is a car you can't race. I remember seeing a real Minardi F1 car from 1998 on the internet not long ago for £220,000 and it's not likely you'll get to race that either. Thing is you might be able to find a location that will let you race it. I'm thinking an ametuer racing club would allow you to enter it like the guys at Castle Hill. These guys would love to have an F1 car taking part I'm sure. Lotus haven't said anything about getting to enter it into a time trial event and compete in events similar to that but it seems as though you can't. My utlimate point is for a third of the price of the fake F1 car you could buy a real one.
Think about that for a second whilst I let you look at the fake one and thank you for reading my blog and hope you join me again tomorrow, or if not, when I get back from holiday.
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