Formula 1 Drivers in Normal Cars

With a day job spent harnessing some of the fastest machines made, it’s often interesting to see what Formula 1 drivers choose to pilot when they’re among us on the public road. From Mark Webber hustling a Proton Savvy to Sir Jackie Steward in a Ford Tempo, here are some of the most entertaining clips of F1 drivers in normal cars.

We’re not sure how Mark Webber was cleared to test three cheap cars, or how fast he was going, but in this entertaining video, he’s drafted in to drive three inexpensive hatchbacks from Proton, Kia, and Fiat. Stay past the credits to hear him say that the exhaust on one of the cars looks like, “a McDonald’s straw”. The sarcasm is strong with this one.

With Sir Jackie Stewart’s long relationship with Ford, it was only inevitable that some of the time, like the Escort video on the left, the gig would be enjoyable. Sometimes, however, it wouldn’t: like testing the then-new Ford Tempo in “dry and wet weather conditions”. Oy.

On one of Jeremy Clarkson’s old VHS specials, he enjoyed a drive in the then-new Ford Mustang Convertible, and was thoughtful enough to ask if he could borrow a lad named Michael Schumacher for a run around Silverstone. Has a stock Mustang V8 Convertible been driven more quickly on film?

Kimi Raikkonen drives an automotive writer around the Ferrari test track at Fiorano in a Ferrari F12, and shows not only his immense talent, but the best way to stop idle chit chat with the writer next to him: full throttle! Yes, the F12 isn’t exactly a “normal” car, but it does move around quite a lot with Kimi at the wheel.

“I want to see it this evening,” Ricardo Patrese says to his wife, who had just suffered through a lap of Jerez at the hands of her ex-F1 husband…and then realized it was all being filmed. She uses an awful lot of colorful language, but the video is subtitled and highly recommended.

Brazilian pizza enthusiast Antônio Pizzonia had a short Formula 1 career, which was not helped by putting legendary motoring writer Steve Sutcliffe upside-down in a gravel trap. Like many on-track forays, it looked as though the driver was the last person to see this one coming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjbrFBE4x8A

 Ayrton Senna in Honda NSX-R…We get in trouble whenever we don’t post this one, so here it is again—this embed is the longest we could find…sadly, that means there’s less than 3 minutes of it.

Cover Image Source: autotrends.my