Driving the Lotus T125

"If we can't find a proper driver, then you'll have to do it!"

It was little more than a throwaway line from AUTOSPORT editor Charles Bradley, but thanks to the short notice and busy schedules of more than 15 professional drivers that were approached, I was sent packing to the Lotus Cars factory at Hethel to drive the monstrous T125.

It was exciting more than nerve-wracking. I'd been fortunate enough last year to be invited to Renault's F1 'Feel It' programme, where (wealthy) members of the public have a day of training and get to cap it all off with a couple of laps in an old Formula 1 car.

"It's pretty violent," someone advised me of the T125, but I was sure that my handful of miles around the Hungaroring with Renault would prepare me for the initial shock of driving something this mad.

I was wrong.

Freeman gets ready for jump in the car © LAT

By the end of the T125 day I was climbing out of this F1 impersonation, heart pounding through my chest, hands still shaking as the adrenaline relentlessly kept pumping. To describe it as mind-blowing is not an exaggeration.

For those who don't know what the T125 is, it's essentially an F1 car for customers - a track day machine but taken to the extreme and built from scratch by Lotus.

On hand to talk myself and three other journalists through driving the car were grand prix winner Jean Alesi and sportscar racer Johnny Mowlem. Both are contracted to Lotus, and both have plenty of experience of the car they have worked so tirelessly to develop. So the last thing they want is some wannabe F1 hero jumping in and binning their 'baby'.

The day started with a passenger run in a Lotus Evora road car, before we took the driving seat for ourselves. With a handful of laps in the GT4 race version of the Evora to get a feel for the track at speed, it was time to be hauled off to the Renault F1 team set-up, where mechanics from the race outfit were on hand for seat fittings.

Alesi performed some detailed measurements before advising the mechanics for my seat fitting, and by that I mean he stood next to me and decided our heights were similar enough that I could use his seat.

As I sat in the car and got comfortable with the pedals, he asked: "Do you left foot brake?"

"I can left foot brake," was my response, calling on 10 years of karting and a bit of time in simulators.

"OK, so you right foot brake," he declared.

So I went out for my first run planning to bring my right foot over from the accelerator to stamp on the brake pedal, which is so wide it fills the rest of the footwell in the T125 (the clutch is hand-operated).

Ready for the moment of truth © LAT

But there was no time. Such is the grunt of the 3.5-litre V8 that my brain had decided the right foot wasn't going to get over there in time. The left was called into action, and it stood up to the job surprisingly well. As it turns out, I genuinely can left foot brake! Not that I'd had much choice in the matter heading into my first braking zone in the car.

Anyway, back to the prep. As touched upon briefly, the T125 is equipped with a hand clutch for pulling away. Having interviewed Nigel Mansell earlier this year after he tested the car at Yas Marina, I knew that according to the 1992 world champion the system on the T125 was so easy that nobody could mess it up.

But when you've never operated a clutch with your hand before you wonder just how different it is to using your foot. Renault adapt their old cars to fit a foot-operated clutch to eliminate this new process for 'Feel It' guests, but the team's partner has decided against such a system for its own creation.

"It pulls away like a dream," Mansell had told me. Alesi and Mowlem were in agreement.

Fortunately, their description of how to avoid stalling - everyone's biggest initial concern when the engine is fired up behind you - suggested that the clutch performed similarly to the foot-operated one in the F1 car: Bring it up a little bit so you start to move, then keep it at that point until you've built up quite a bit of forward motion. Only once you are up to speed do you let the rest of the clutch out.

To make the process a little bit easier, the T125 is fitted with a very clever system that enables the car to pull away without the driver needing to use any throttle. You can focus 100 per cent on the clutch, get rolling, then worry about everything else. And just like Mansell said, it works a treat. Still, I wouldn't fancy having to master that technique at speed for a race start!

When you're off and running in any fast car, everybody wants to nail the accelerator and see what they've got to play with. Now remember, before heading to Hethel I was warned that the T125 was "violent". And on track, once my neck muscles had returned my head to its correct distance away from my shoulders, I had to agree.

The power of this car isn't just violent, it's downright abusive! There has been no holding back from Cosworth and Lotus in the engine department. Sure, it doesn't rev as high as an F1 car, but it still delivers a punishing shove in the back when called into action.

Alesi gives Freeman some advice on how to drive the car © LAT

Keeping your head still at those speeds is no mean feat, but you have to get it under some sort of control so you can pick out your braking point, which in this instance was into a tight chicane on the Hethel track. As explained previously there had been a last-second switch to left foot braking, and the feel from the brakes is also very similar to what the pros have to deal with. You have to warm them up by gently running the brake pedal down the straights to begin with, but once they are up to temperature they are there to be stamped on.

The brakes have not been softened to offer more feel and travel in the pedal. This is a proper F1 braking system similar to that used on the Renault cars just a couple of years ago. The harder you hit it the better, and once again those neck muscles are straining to keep your head in place while your eyelids close ever so slightly to prevent anything important from making a break for it!

So that's going and stopping out of the way, but how about cornering? One of Alesi's main ambitions with setting the car up for amateurs is to give a very responsive steering system. In this week's AUTOSPORT he explains exclusively to us what he has done to make the T125 a success, and one of the features he points out is that the car has a very responsive steering setup.

Alesi says that the steering would be too pointy for an out-and-out racer, but it needs to be like that for those who don't work the car hard enough to get it turning properly. The result is fantastic feedback for the amateur driver, meaning that the car responds well at any speed. Getting a quick turn in to a high-speed corner is relatively easy, and direction change in a series of S-bends is very confidence inspiring.

Watching Alesi at the wheel, it was clear he was kicking the back of the car around with the throttle in hairpins. Learning that skill is not something worth trying in a couple of short runs, but fortunately the pointiness of the car is such that you don't even need to get your arms crossed up to get it round the tightest of corners.

Lotus likes to keep the runs short in this car to prevent F1 wannabes from getting too confident (or too tired). With the car set up so well to accommodate those with no experience at this level, it is easy to build up a tonne of confidence very quickly.

Jean Alesi oversaw the test © LAT

In the end, this does lead you to overdriving as you become more and more convinced of your previously undiscovered F1-worthy talent. But interestingly, as is so often the case in proper racing cars, pushing harder doesn't always result in laptime gain. According to the Lotus mechanics, despite my growing confidence with every lap and a feeling that I could push more as each corner passed, my fastest lap was in fact early in my run.

That final run had to be brought to an end by red flags being waved around the track, as I cheekily took advantage of the fact that we hadn't agreed on a set number of laps before I set off. But that is what this car does to its driver. It inspires, and it begs to be pushed to the edge.

A real F1 car wouldn't give those sorts of sensations to someone who wasn't going to get near the limit in a handful of laps. But that is the magic of this exhilarating beast.