It’s pretty obvious that I can’t. I think that goes without saying. I just saw a Honda commercial making light of it, with a husband desperate to convince his wife to let him buy the Honda F-1 racer he parked in their driveway.
I know it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but I suspect much of the developed world has some sort of basic requirement for a road vehicle that a Yugo meets but an F-1 car does not. Is it an issue that it goes too fast? Crash safety issue? Its width? Or perhaps they *are *roadworthy but no one’s been stupid enough to try it?
I can presume that it would need to be modified, but suppose I had gobs and gobs of the green stuff, and put side and rear view mirrors on my Michael Schumacher Ferrari racer, along with brake lights and turn signals. Then could I roll into the Dairy Queen with my sweet million dollar car and not get in trouble with the law?
You will get stuck on your first driveway curb or speed bump. Plus, the green people will throw seal blood over you for not having a catalytic converter.
I’d be concerned about emissions standards, if that’s something required to pass inspection in your jurisdiction. That said, I don’t know much about F1 engines; for all I know they burn cleaner than those in your standard automobile.
F1 cars already have side mirrors but not rear (though I don’t believe this is a legal requirement, large vans don’t have them). They also have a rear light that they use in wet conditions, I don’t suppose it would be too difficult to re-purpose it as a brake light.
The closest to an F1 car that I can think of (that are road-worthy) would be the Ariel Atom or the Caparo T1
The only figures I could find on emissions from F1 cars draw the following comparison:
Average road car: 160 g/km
F1 car: 1737 g/km
These results are not too accurate, being based solely on how much fuel an F1 car uses per 100km and using standard petrol as a stand-in for F1 fuel.
Think Johnny L.A. pretty much hit it. The only thing I’d add that I don’t think was yet mentioned, is the noise. Race cars are ridiculously loud. Further, I think that much of the value in vintage race cars is in their authenticity. You go and alter them by raising the ride height, slapping a cat and muffler on their exhaust (never mind the joy you’d have by then having to go reprogram the engine computers), adding bumpers: you’d have pretty much killed the value of the car.
I idly daydream about whooshing down an isolated stretch of highway in a YellowBird, but realize the truth of P.J. O’Rourke’s comments on the Jaguar XJ12, (paraphrasing) “[The car] goes as fast as you ever would, in a car that you had to pay for yourself.”
Years ago, I had a co-worker whose hobby was collecting racecars (and racetrucks, believe it or not). Unfortunately, he lived between my house and our place of employment, so I’d occassionally get stuck behind him in traffic.
By “stuck behind him”, I mean that he’d drive his racecars at 20-25 mph on the highway. And Gray Ghost ain’t joking about how loud the cars can be. My co-worker claimed that trying to drive the cars at normal highway speeds would all but destroy their engines, and I have no reason to doubt him.
As far as I know, he never had any trouble with the cops, but this happened out in the sticks, not in a residential area or on a freeway.
I bet those cars were meant for ‘drag racing’, or short-distance sprints. The gear in rear-end is usually much higher on strip-cars (or lower depending on definition) than highway-use vehicles, and the rear-end will not give the car decent low-rpm performance while at driving speeds unless there is an ‘overdrive’ gear in tranny. They are designed to max-out at lower speeds, basically, but to get to that speed muy pronto!
I once rode with a buddy from Oklahoma City to central Kansas in a '72 Charger with a 4.4 rear-end, iirc. His friend with trailer no-showed, so he had to drive his car rather than trailer it the whole way. At ~60mph, the car was turning close to redline in top gear, so had to go slower. LOUD, even with the exhaust dumps closed. But that car could get down a 1/4 mile strip in less than 10 seconds with front wheels ~off the pavement a good bit of the way (!). Awesome fun. My '71 Charger, which had similar engine (punched 383ci with great tuning) but much ‘lower’ rear-end (2.7?) and a 4-spd overdrive ‘conversion’, would turn less than 1k rpm at over 70mph (torque-monster engine). It had nowhere near the giddy-up, though, but I could drive it, comfortably, like a real ‘driver’.
Many track/race cars have poor performance with typical driving-speed ranges, so not very popular to use them as such. Especially when lowered front-ends bounce off pavement repeatedly on rougher roads.
Not only are they prone to stalling, as SunSandSuffering states, they also overheat massively. They have no active cooling so rely on air passing through the engine as they drive. This is why the leader of the formation lap will try to bunch the field up at the end of the lap so he isn’t sat motionless on the grid for so long.
Also, F1 cars need to be driven fast in order to work, the brakes and tires are iffy at best if they aren’t up to temperature. Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond tried to drive one and kept spinning the car as he didn’t have the confidence to drive it fast enough for it to warm up and get the aerodynamics working to keep the car pointing in the right direction.
If you bought the vehicle from someone, in the U.S. federal milage and pollution regulations kick in. If you built it yourself, and didn’t sell it (or other cars you built) to anyone, then federal standards don’t apply (depending on the state, you still might need to meet emissions standards to pass inspection).
[I don’t think it’s been mentioned; I believe many states have various waivers for classic/antique cars. So an old F1 racer might be easier to license]
Don’t know if it applies to you, but I had a chance to drive a Formula Ford once. Couldn’t come even close to squeezing my 6’5" 200+ pound self into the cockpit. I think my ass would actually have fit,* but your legs basically go into a tunnel, and if they are too long, there is no way to compensate by bending your knees. I suspect F-1 cars are similar. If it is not specifically built for an out-sized driver, they are not going to waste the weight, space, and chassis stiffness to allow it to accommodate one.
*A person who actually did get to drive it probably matched my weight at nearly a foot shorter.
[nitpick]
I think F1 cars may actually have a reverse gear, see this famous clip for a view of it working. Basically Nigel Mansell was black-flagged for reversing in the pit lane, he missed his pit box and reversed back into it. Deffo no speedometer though!
[/nitpick]
