Formula 1 feels a little bit like it has been intentionally siloed off from the rest of motorsport, like it’s an impenetrable fortress. That’s what makes it all the more exciting when an “outsider” gets to try their skills aboard an F1 car. Even highly-controlled corporate events like this one, featuring an old chassis from the pre-halo days to get around F1 testing regulations, are still fun to see. Toyota WRC driver Kalle Rovanperä stepped into the 2012 championship-winning Red Bull RB8 for some laps at the Red Bull Ring.
Kalle was twelve years old when this car was racing. And he was already driving rally cars.
Getting up to speed in an F1 car isn’t the work of a moment. Most racers spend their entire lives running in karts and open-wheelers before getting an opportunity in Formula 1. 24-year-old Finnish driver and two-time WRC world champ Rovanperä has spent his life pursuing a career in rally, and has been a part of the Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team since 2017. He’s quite good at it. For 2024 he’s run a selection of WRC events with a focus on improving his track driving skills, joining the Porsche Carrera Cup and doing some drifting.
For the purposes of this event, the Red Bull team put together ten laps of instruction for Kalle to get up to speed with hundreds more horsepower and tons more downforce than he’s used to. He stepped into a Formula 4 car for a handful of laps with instruction from Patrick Friesacher, who raced for Minardi in 2005 and has since become the chief driving instructor at the Red Bull Ring.
It’s difficult to say exactly how Kalle’s times compare to other drivers in similar equipment around the Red Bull Ring, because it wasn’t a track that the series used for the 2012 season. His final lap time of 1:15.680 is about ten seconds slower than the current track record, a 1:05.619 set by Carlos Sainz in the 2020 McLaren MCL35 during that year’s Styrian Grand Prix. Given that the 2012 Red Bull was about about eight percent slower in qualifying at tracks shared between the seasons than the 2020 McLaren, it’s safe to say Kalle is more or less up to speed after ten laps. It’s entirely theoretically possible he could qualify for the current F1 grid if he just showed up in Vegas and took someone’s seat.