Racing Old F1 Cars On A Banned Grand Prix Racetrack Is Our Idea Of A Good Time

Jul. 10, 2022 12:00 PM ET by Chase Bierenkoven Formula One / 4 Comments

Who wouldn't want to hoon James Hunt's F1 car?

Formula 1 used to be so dangerous that a driver would die on a regular basis. Thankfully, the sport is much safer, and crashes are much less deadly. Still, the cars that came out of that thirty-odd-year period of rapid technological advancement and sparse regulation are among the most iconic race cars ever built.

These race cars are also just very raw cars, fundamentally. They're not the spaceships we get in F1 today. That means that normal people with inordinate amounts of cash can simply buy and race these old F1 cars. Well, a bunch of well-to-do gentlemen racers did just that and went all out, which looks super sketchy on an old, outdated Grand Prix track.

https://www.facebook.com/100010420396014/videos/405150994982848/

Race cars of this era, like the James Hunt Hesketh you see above or the John Player Special Lotus you see below, had no advanced driving nannies or traction control. What's more, the cars had far more horsepower than the driver's sense of self-preservation. Generally, that leads to a lot of running out of talent shortly before running out of grip. Thankfully, at this Masters Historic Racing event held in Canada at the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, no mishaps took place.

It is a little tough to tell without telemetry data on this helmet-mounted GoPro, but both drivers appear to be darn close to the limit while racing each other. The white car with the giant intake fin is the Hesketh, by the way. Hunt founded the team just before his championship-winning stint at McLaren. At one point, the driver of the filming car has a look down the inside of the Hesketh but thinks better of it in the close racing action.

Honestly, that's probably because of the value of the cars at the Masters Historic Racing event. The track used to be an F1 course but was outlawed for being too dangerous as the cars got faster. Not the type of place you want to sneak up on the inside. That Hesketh car is easily worth north of a million dollars, and we don't even want to know how much the JPS car would fetch at auction.

Also in attendance was a Benetton/Alfa Romeo, a car which was at one point raced by Ricciardo Patrese. It's tough to put a dollar value on some of these cars given how few and far between they are but, as ever, if you have to ask... you can't afford it.

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