Yahoo Autos Fans Can Burn Pirelli’s Rubber—and Their Own Cash—on F1 Tracks
You know how it’s often difficult when spectating at a race to get a feel for the layout, topography, and entirety of the track? The newly launched Pirelli Hot Laps program allows participants to get a screaming lap around Formula 1 tracks and get a driver’s viewpoint while sitting in the passenger seat of racy street cars. The drivers are all professional racers and, occasionally, even some of F1’s big guns-Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, Fernando Alonso, Daniel Ricciardo-do the piloting.
Each of the three participating automakers provides a pair of its high-performance cars-McLaren 720S, Aston Martin Vantage, and Mercedes-AMG GT R (Ferrari apparently wasn’t interested)-while Pirelli packs a few extra sets of street P Zeros into its many Maersk shipping containers that haul all the race rubber and tire-changing supplies. The six cars travel around with the trove of tools, supplies, and temporary structures that make up the sprawling Formula 1 paddock. The Hot Laps program will be present in the leadup to seven of the remaining 14 races this season, including at Paul Ricard in France, Hockenheim in Germany, Monza in Italy, and Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas.
We caught up with it during Canadian Grand Prix weekend in Montreal, where we were quickly introduced to the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve with a rapid sluice through the Turn 1/2 ess complex, and rapidly gained a vigorous respect for just how little runoff area there is at this temporary track. Ours was the fourth and final lap in car #5, the first of two gray McLaren 720Ss, driven by Duncan Tappy, whose next stop will be at Le Mans to race in a Norma LMP3 car. Ahead of us in line, a father had given his son the ridealong for his 21st birthday.
We surpassed 150 mph at a couple of different points on our lap, and-perhaps because the tires no longer needed preserving-Tappy put on a showboating smoke spectacle by carrying a healthy drift all the way through the hairpin, where a flock of smartphone-wielding spectators were recording the proceedings. Obviously track time during a race weekend is at a severe premium; in 20 minutes, each of the six cars thrills four passengers, and it’s all over. A day later, participants receive a three-minute video of their lap, including in-car footage plus a surprising number of cuts to shots from trackside and even overhead.
You know what’s coming. Nothing on a Formula 1 weekend is cheap, and the price is in line with assumptions that tend toward astonishing. Typically available on multiple days during a F1 weekend, this new way to get out from behind the deep reserves of Taittinger and lobster in Formula 1’s posh Paddock Club lounge goes for roughly $15,000 (the price varies slightly depending on the location). However, that also includes a three-day Paddock Club Legends ticket, which is otherwise around $7000 on its own. On the upside, those who can stomach the cost may well be in the market for one of these $150,000-and-up cars that reside at the pointy end of the performance spectrum.
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