The longest-serving Red Bull driver revealing F1’s true brutality

His face is obscured behind his helmet, but the tone of his voice suggests that the Red Bull driver is grinning from ear to ear.

“How was it?” asks 11-time grand prix starter Patrick Friesacher.

“Wow,” is about all I can muster. “Thanks so much.”

As I extricate myself, slowly, from the two-seater Formula 1 car in which I’ve been whisked around the counter-clockwise Eurospeedway Lausitzring for one fast out-and-in lap, I try to take stock of the whirlwind of events.

The DTM’s director of marketing and communications, Jens Nagler, had offered me the chance of a passenger ride earlier that afternoon. My previous, and only on-track experience, was three laps of the Brands Hatch Indy Circuit in a Ginetta that I’d stalled exiting the pitlane. This would be an entirely different league.

The ‘Minardi’ two-seater, now bedecked in Red Bull colours and operated by a core team of six – Richard Salisbury, Gawain Rawle, John Bolton, Wayne Hidden, Chris Hills and Nigel Brown – is based on the 1998 Tyrrell 026. The chassis raced in period by Tora Takagi and Ricardo Rosset were subsequently purchased by future Minardi owner Paul Stoddart, who devised the two-seater programme that has since been operated all around the world. Rawle cites a car park in Taiwan and an ice rink in Melbourne, of all places, as among the most esoteric locations.

The two-seater has a longer wheelbase than a conventional F1 car to accommodate the passenger, and is built without worrying about getting down to a weight limit.

“The handling of that car is really great because the wheelbase is a bit longer,” explains Friesacher. “You have to get used to that steering wheel position because you are really close to the steering wheel, especially when you have a tall guy in the car, so sometimes you’re a bit steering with one hand…” Gulp.

Friesacher drove the F1 two-seater to give lucky people at the Lausitzring a taste of speed - including Mr. Newbold...

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

The barking Cosworth V10 engine, a familiar soundtrack to watching grands prix as a kid, is altogether more animal behind my back as Friesacher – clearly enjoying driving the track for the first time since 2000 in Formula 3 – applies the throttle out of the pitlane. The brakes, savagely stopping the car into the Turn 2 left-hander, leave me very grateful for the HANS device attached to my helmet.

As the car flicks immediately right through Turn 3, I’m struggling to keep up and focusing on clinging on. Down the back straight towards Turn 5, the wind buffets my helmet and tries to rip it off my head, even as I try to crouch my head behind the seat bulkhead. Through the long left-hand final corner my complaining neck informs me, as if I hadn’t worked it out already, that I’m not cut out to be an elite racing driver.

It’s the experience of a lifetime and I’m feeling breathless as Friesacher completes his run. It gives me a renewed appreciation for the fitness and concentration required to put in consistent lap times under such physical stress for lap after lap.

"There was always very high expectations [with Red Bull], and you have to bring the results, otherwise you are very quickly out" Patrick Friesacher

As I try to get my jelly legs working again and my knuckles slowly regain colour, my chauffeur is content with another job well done.

“Every reaction is in a different way,” Friesacher reassures me afterwards. “Sometimes they are getting out with a lot of adrenaline, smiling or maybe they are a bit shaky!” I could sympathise with that.

There’s a good case for calling Friesacher Red Bull’s longest-serving driver, having first earned support from Dietrich Mateschitz’s energy drinks manufacturer while karting in 1993. When that is put to the Austrian, twice a winner in International Formula 3000 who finished sixth with Minardi in the infamous 2005 US Grand Prix, he chuckles.

“I don’t know exactly,” he replies. “But yeah, my first year was in ’93 and now we‘re in 2022, so really a long period! Without them, I couldn’t have done the motorsport racing career, they supported me from go-karts up to Formula 3000 and we had really great times together.

Friesacher regularly samples Red Bull machinery in his role as demo driver, continuing a long relationship with the company dating back to 1993 in karts

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

“More or less we won in each category, in go-karts, in Formula Renault, Formula 3 and Formula 3000. There was always very high expectations, and you have to bring the results, otherwise you are very quickly out.”

Friesacher estimates he’s “been to Goodwood already 10 or 12 years” for the Festival of Speed, “sometimes with the Formula 1 cars, sometimes with the Red Bull NASCAR”. The V8-powered RB7 from 2011 or its 2012 successor, the RB8, are typically the F1 machines of choice for such demo events “because it’s just a little bit easier to handle - the new cars with all the systems, it’s a bit complicated, you need more people”. Friesacher has taken them around the world too, including to Jeddah before the first F1 race there last year.

His Red Bull connection doesn’t stop at demo events either – his 9-5 job is as a driver coach at the Red Bull Ring’s driving school.

“We have the KTM X-Bow, the Porsche cars, the Formula 4 cars, Formula Renault 3.5 and that’s every time something different, a lot of different people, different trainings, taxi rides, hot laps, I’m really enjoying that,” he says.

That Friesacher – unrelated to Markus Friesacher, who was also briefly on Red Bull’s books – made it to F1 at all is remarkable considering the injuries he suffered in a 1997 karting accident that left him in a wheelchair for nine months.

“That was a really big shunt,” he recalls. “My father had an indoor go-kart place, and sometimes in the afternoon we took out the 125cc shifter go-karts. Somebody in front of me spun and I hit him, more or less broken everything in my legs, both legs. I was really lucky that I didn’t lose my legs and that immediately the right medical care was there because Ronnie Peterson more or less died on that. I was really lucky.”

After two years in France, finishing third in the 1998 Formula Renault championship and third in the 1999 Formula 3 Class B championship, “we made the decision together with Red Bull that we go to the Formula 3 championship in Germany, at this time it was quite strong.”

Driving with Bertram Shaefer’s well-regarded team, he was team-mates with Andre Lotterer and won twice as he finished sixth in the championship, clinched by future F3000 rival Giorgio Pantano. From there came the leap to F3000 with Helmut Marko’s Red Bull Junior Team, scoring a pole position on home turf (when the Red Bull Ring was known as the A1-Ring) before tangling with Sebastien Bourdais on the run to Turn 1.

Friesacher won at Hungary in the 2003 F3000 round, beating eventual champion Bjorn Wirdheim and future IndyCar driver Townsend Bell

Photo by: Sutton Images

Marko’s team struggled in 2002 following the switch to a newer Lola chassis and second to Bourdais at Monaco was the sole bright spot of the year, but Friesacher switched to Coloni for 2003 and started well with a second place at Imola. However an innocuous start crash in Spain broke his wrist, causing him to miss his two specialist tracks in the A1-Ring and Monaco. Three podiums to end the year, including a win in Hungary, was far too late to stop Bjorn Wirdheim taking the title.

Friesacher doesn’t want to go into details about the circumstances that led to his exiting the fold at the end of 2003, merely stating “we just had different ways”. He went it alone during his final F3000 season in 2004, taking another win in Hungary, and for his partial year in F1.

“I wasn’t a Red Bull-supported driver when I drove for Minardi,” he confirms. “I was lucky that I was getting that place, it was in the latest moment just a few weeks before the first race in Australia. When you are a racing driver, all racing drivers want to reach Formula 1 and not many people get that chance.”

He only got two days of testing before heading to Australia for the opening round, having never completed a race distance before. “Also,” he says, “the car was not easy to handle…”

"After 20 laps [at Indianapolis, 2005], my engineer told me not to shift down anymore into second or first gear, so I had to do all the hairpins more or less in third gear or it would break, and then there were no points at all. And points for Minardi, it was so important" Patrick Friesacher

It certainly didn’t help matters that his PS04B chassis had its roots in the 2002 car. Nor that both Friesacher and team-mate team-mate Christijan Albers were blocked from running on Friday in Melbourne while the embattled team boss Stoddart was embroiled in a legal dispute to allow his cash-strapped team to race without being modified to the updated 2005 aero rules. Just finishing was, under the circumstances, an achievement.

A new car, the PS05, arrived for Imola and Friesacher regarded it as “a big step forwards”. But he only did two days of testing with it at Mugello, completing a grand total of 85 laps.

“You needed more testing or running, more windtunnel time and where we made one step, the other teams made already two or three steps,” he explains. “We were the smallest team with the lowest budget, but still it was a great experience, I learned a lot. It was a shame that it ended after 11 races but that’s how it is.”

Friesacher drove for Minardi in F1 for 11 races, before losing his seat to Robert Doornbos, recording a best finish of sixth at the farcical US GP

Photo by: Sutton Images

He didn’t have much of a chance to fight with other teams in 2005 – even the Jordans were out of reach – but Friesacher did manage to outqualify Albers 6-5. However, his best opportunity to impress when all the Michelin runners were forced to withdraw before the start at Indianapolis was hampered by gearbox problems. It meant Friesacher couldn’t challenge Albers and finished a 15 seconds behind in sixth in the one race where Minardi had plenty of guaranteed eyeballs.

“After 20 laps, my engineer told me not to shift down anymore into second or first gear, so I had to do all the hairpins more or less in third gear,” he says. “[Otherwise] it would break, and then there were no points at all. And points for Minardi, it was so important. But that’s why I got sixth place, otherwise I think I could have gone fifth. That’s how it is, but overall I am happy how it went.”

Friesacher hasn’t raced since 2008, when a rear wishbone failure testing the new A1GP car at Magny-Cours launched him into the air and left him with three broken vertebrae. But while he admits that stopping racing wasn’t a conscious decision, it’s clear that he is content with his lot and gets a lot of enjoyment from his demonstration runs, giving ordinary people a chance to understand something of what it is to be on the F1 grid.

“I sit so often in a racecar, and in different racing cars,” he says. “I’m really enjoying the promo stuff like we did here with the two-seater and also when I can drive the F1 car from Red Bull, that’s just a great honour for me.

“It’s always great to give an inspiration, also to you, how it is in a formula car because not many people have an idea what’s going on in such a car, what you feel in the car and when the rear is getting nervous. I think today you felt it!

“And the late-braking, the corner speed as well. What is cool for me when everybody gets out of the car with a big smile on their face and make them happy, that’s what I really like and enjoy.”

After us, Red Bull DTM racer Felipe Fraga gets a turn behind the wheel and his race engineer Jorge Segers nestles into the seat I’d recently vacated. It’s not clear afterwards who has the more fun, with Fraga excitedly telling Friesacher that he felt like a kid playing a video game. Friesacher knows the feeling all too well.

I’ll never forget my first trip to, and around, the Lausitzring. Thank you Patrick.

Friesacher relishes his role giving ordinary people a taster of what it's like to be inside an F1 car

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool