Speed Week 2016: driving the Red Bull NASCAR

At the mere mention of NASCAR, most journalists will dive into a barrel of well-worn cliches. 

Cliches such as its fans are all Coors-guzzling rednecks with Confederate flag tattoos. Or that the technology is so Stone Age, it makes a ride-on lawnmower look like VSS Unity. Or that the tracks are ovals because Americans can’t remember to turn right as well as left. But not me. Nope. I would never stoop that low. Especially as I’m currently sitting in the belly of the world’s angriest car, and everything has just become very serious indeed. The vibrations are making my eyeballs rattle around in their sockets, I’m uncomfortably hot, my head is throbbing and my nerves are frayed to the point that if there wasn’t netting covering the windows, I would happily paint some new graphics down the side of the car.

Images: Mark Fagelson & Rowan Horncastle

Not that I’m complaining, you understand. This is, without question, the most excited I’ve ever been while simultaneously contemplating my imminent and certain death. For this will be no sanitised ride-along. I shall have no sighter laps or tuition from the passenger seat. I’m being sent out on one of F1’s most undulating tracks in a NASCAR with little more than a slap on the back and a double thumbs-up. To be fair, having posted myself through the window with all the grace of a drunken baboon, there was a briefing on how to operate it. It went something like this: “Don’t worry about all those buttons. Flick that to turn it on, keep your eye on the water temperature and you can flat shift on the way up, but wait for the revs to fall on the way down.” And that’s it. The whole shebang. Ikea coffee tables have more instructions.

But isn’t that the beauty of it all? If an ape like me can jump in and get it within two minutes, even the bloke with his beer-dispensing Viking helmet in row Z will have a loose grasp on how things work and what’s going on. If you ignore the peripheries: the net windows (invented by The King, Richard Petty, to stop flailing arms from being snapped-off in a barrel-roll situation – thanks, Mr Petty), the five-point harnesses, the roll cage, the exposed wiring everywhere, it works, by and large, like an Avensis diesel. There are three pedals, a steering wheel and a four-speed-plus-reverse H-pattern manual gearbox. Admittedly, the oil requires 10 minutes of warming through, but even that process is wonderfully archaic – you simply jack up the rear wheels and rev the arse… sorry, butt… off it, creating a noise so mighty that you can’t help but stand there and giggle, while blood trickles from your perforated eardrums. 

So, the oil is warmed, a quivering driver is attached and the track is clear. Just time for a few last-minute pointers from Bernhard Auinger, boss of Driving Experiences at the Red Bull Ring: “OK, you’re all set, enjoy yourself out there. Just remember that the brakes aren’t great, plus there’s a lot of front-bias to help with burnouts, and there’s no ABS and no traction control either. Oh, and watch out on the first two laps while the tyres are cold, it will want to oversteer. Everywhere. And it’s a heavy thing so there’s quite a bit of bodyroll, and the clutch is seriously snatchy – try not to stall.” Is that all, Bernhard? Why don’t you throw a few tarantulas into my racesuit while you’re at it, you know, to keep me on my toes?

Just to reiterate, this isn’t some decaf replica, it’s as real as NASCARs get. This particular Camry was driven by Brian Vickers in the 2011 Sprint Cup Series for Red Bull Racing – the same year that Red Bull pulled out of NASCAR (I’m assured it wasn’t the car’s fault). At over five metres long and 1,850kg, it’s roughly the size and weight of a BMW 7 Series, but powered by a 5.5-litre V8 (naturally aspirated, of course) producing around 700bhp. In race trim, the V8 would have revved to 8,000rpm, with a top speed approaching 200mph, but our vehicle has a handful of necessary modifications for its new life deafening and choking crowds, and scaring the bejesus out of paying punters, at the Ring.

The rev limit is set to 7,000rpm, de-stressing the engine and prolonging its life indefinitely, while the cross weighting that helped it turn left on an oval, has been removed. There are shorter gear ratios – dropping the top speed to 142mph, but giving it a lot more snap out of tight bends – and the suspension has been softened up so the car moves around a bit more, essential for hamming it up on demo runs. It also has smoke cannons fitted at the rear, which I’m told under no circumstances am I allowed to touch. I suspect with 700bhp and no electronic nannies, we’ll be fine for smoke.

I lurch and splutter my way down the pit lane, the engine showing a clear disdain for low speeds and then, before I know it, I’m butting the limiter in fourth along the top straight. Holy deep fried Oreos, this thing pulls hard. Initially it reminds me of an Ariel Atom – unlikely comparison, I know – in the way that by the time you ram home one gear, with the long-levered but beautifully short and tight shift action, you need to be reaching for the next. Feed the throttle in and low-speed truculence clears the way for ridiculous mid-range punch and a furious top end. And the noise – even through my helmet and earplugs – is terrifying. A V8 bass line with lead guitar played by gnashing metal and hot gas. If you took America and distilled it into a single soundbite, it’s playing out the side exhausts now.

Approaching and into the corners, the Atom comparison begins to dissolve. The biggest issue is the brakes – they’re upgraded over the original racer, but still struggle to deliver any meaningful bite. You have to hit them early to give yourself any chance, so I quickly adopt a very-slow-in, as-fast-as-possible-out strategy. Mid-corner, it rolls like a big old bus, but there’s no shortage of grip – and we’re not talking about your namby-pamby downforce here, this is rubber on asphalt, pure mechanical traction.

Frankly, though, I’ve never driven anything where normal road-test observations are less relevant, because my fantasy cortex is working overtime. Down the pit straight I position the car extreme right, centimetres from the wall, and I’m Cole Trickle squeezing round the outside of Rowdy Burns. I drop the hammer out of turn two and I’m Ricky Bobby at the Talladega 500. And anyone that says my entire NASCAR knowledge comes from watching films is a liar. 

If there’s one thing I’ll take away from this, besides tinnitus, it’s that, yes, there’s some truth in those vicious NASCAR stereotypes, but there’s nothing wrong with that. While F1’s job description is to be the technical pinnacle of land-based transport, NASCAR’s is to be as loud, fast, dangerous and straightforward as possible, and isn’t that the essence of what racing fans actually want? That’s it, you can keep your KERS and super-softs, I’m off to get a beer and a tattoo.

Video: Top Gear drives a NASCAR