Last summer, I had the opportunity to fulfill a childhood dream by spending a whole day driving a Formula Renault 2.0. It was so much more than anything I could dream up as a kid, when I was sitting in my bed with a cushion under my knees, a book as a steering wheel and making weird noises. Which I still do, of course.


The Formula Renault 2.0 is known in Europe for being the first step towards Formula 1, after karting. With around 200hp for 500kg, it sits just below an F3, which is also approximatively the power-to-weight ratio of a Lamborghini Aventador. With serious downforce, a sequential gearbox and slicks.

The track I was at was no joke either. Dijon-Prenois was once the home of the French Grand Prix, and will be stuck for ever in F1 fans’ memory because of this epic battle at the 1979 GP:

This is a relatively short track, but it has lots of elevation changes and a lack of very slow corners that makes me think of it as a 1:2 scale Watkins Glen. Just after the safety briefing, we got in a van that took us for two laps around it, and let me tell you I wasn’t exactly feeling over confident after that. I had no prior track experience besides the usual rental kart thing, and of course had never driven a race car before that day. Suffice to say that in addition to all the excitement there was a fair bit of fear looming around.


But after about an hour of various briefings, we were told to suit up and get in the cars, for the first of three 20-minutes sessions.

So, looking like an idiot (only pro drivers can look good in race suits, it seems), getting ever more scared, I finally got to do the leg-first, arms-up gymnastic to get in the car. That made 10-year-old me who was trying to get in the bathtub like Schumi very warm inside. But when that’s done and I’m (rather comfortably, I have to say) stuck in that warm, tight and harsh carbon tub, it really downs on me: I’ll have to drive this in a few minutes, and manage to not look like a total dick. And, you know, not crash the car.



After a few minutes of me trying to not think about the fact that I did not pick the additional insurance covering crashes, a mechanic plugged what I think was an auxillary battery at the back of the car, pressed a button in the cockpit, and the car rumbled into life. And I rumbled too, since the 2.0 liters four-pot is directly stuck in the carbon tub, and so was my spine.


Then I stalled. Because of course I did. The clutch pedal has no feedback at all, so no way to figure out when it’s gonna grab. And when it does, it grabs instantly, and very aggressively. I was also, it has to be said, a bit shy with the throttle. Feeling a race engine revving instantly at the comand of your right foot was somewhat intimidating at first. I was also the only one to stall. In the whole day. Not exactly confidence inspiring.

So here we go again. Re-start the car, gestures from the instructor, this time I manage to get the car rolling, and I’m away!


“Holy hell, I’m driving a race car.”

But although my first lap was pretty scary, as you would expect, everything turned out to be smoother and easier than I feared. The brake pedal didn’t feel like I had to nuke it to stop. The steering was really direct of course (which is awesome), but not too heavy. All in all, the car didn’t feel like it wanted to kill me. The only things that were a tad worrying were the throttle pedal which that had only two positions, 10 and 100%, and the gearbox which seemed to be acting up a bit.


I quickly caught up with a queue of two drivers who seemed to go very slowly. But I did what I was taught in briefing: calmly wait for the marshalls to wave blue flag in the main straight. But that never really happened, because, as I learned during the final session, marshalls won’t actually wave the flag if you’re not already alongside the slow car. But I really didn’t want to be an ass and so I spent about 10 minutes behind a car a bit slower than me. Which was fine, because this way I had time to learn the track and get comfortable with the car.


After this first session, we had a quick debrief with the instructors, and a few minutes to relax. Again, it might seem weird, but I was less tired than after driving a rental kart for 10 minutes real hard. You don’t have to hold your body yourself because of the harness and tight seat, the steering isn’t brutaly heavy when you’re at speed, and the brakes are much less hard than in, say, an old unassisted 911. Overall, this is pretty user friendly! Which makes sense considering it was designed as a learning step for 16-year-old kids who just got out of karting. The real challenge was the heat, as it was the hottest week I remember seeing in France.



During the second session, my fears went away (for the most part), and so did the guy who was in front of me. Which meant I could open it up a bit more. The first time I got full throttle out of the slowest corner, I’ll always remember. It really feels like taking off. Or going on a free fall, which makes sense since you’re laying almost horizontally in the car and so your body tells you that you are falling feet first. It really goes too, and at the end of the front straight I was doing about 220, 230 kph (around 140 mph).


But the thing is, it was hard to get a feel for how fast I was going on the main straight. There’s no speedometer in the cars, and the track at this point is pretty wide so it actually felt slower than, say, going 100mph on a normal road. Which I never ever did, of course officer. Really, the only way to tell that you’re going really fast is the wind. I’m sure the bikers around here will know what I mean: because the helmet creates a bit of lift at speed, it feels like your head wants to take off without you. Which is a bit disconcerting.


Turn 1 is a pretty wide, 4th-gear corner. But even so, it takes a serious bit of braking before entering it. In theory, you’re supposed to trail-brake it, take a wide entry and a late apex to line up for the following esses. I only did that once, because feeling the car rotate under braking, while pretty cool, is also a bit scary because you never know when you’ll get snap oversteer and you’re still going pretty quickly at that point. So, most of the time, I settled for heavy but straight braking. And man, braking is brutal. Just like acceleration feels like taking off, braking feels like landing hard. More like hitting a brick wall, really. In the couple of seconds when I was braking very hard, I couldn’t breath.

Turn 2, which is actually a couple of esses with multiple elevation changes and decreasing radius, was my favorite part of the track. You only need to lift a bit to help the nose get to the apex, and by the time you get to turn 3 (pictured above), you’re in 5th. Because for a long while you’re in corners, with G-forces increasing at each part of the esses, it’s where I really felt that my neck was getting tired at the end of the day.


The most impressive (and scary) corner, however, is Pouas, turn 8. It’s a very long right hander, with three different elevation changes in the middle of it. You enter it in 4th gear and leave it in top of 5th. Because it’s the last corner before the main straight, exit speed is crucial. Getting a clean late apex and not lifting are key. But there’s a wall waiting for you if things go wrong, and you are going at around 110 mph, experiencing the most lateral forces of the whole track. You really feel the downforce coming in there, but at this point you just have to unplug your brain and keep your foot planted. The car suddendly feels like it can turn more, when a second before there still was a bit of understeer. Sort of like the car was tied to a pole at the apex, like these tethered RC cars that reach 200 mph in tiny circles.

The steering wheel is moving in my hands, fighting me. But man, what a nice feeling when I got it right and came out like a bullet onto the straight, as if I was in a slingshot powered car.


That corner is also the main unofficial overtaking point, since to get blue flags you need to be alongside in the straight. In the third session that’s how I got a clear track for the most part, slipping past in the inside on corner exit, having a clear speed advantage with a later apex (and probably less brain).


After a whole day driving it, the FR2.0 turned out to be much more friendly than I thought. I was scared the steering and brakes would be incredibly heavy, and that the car would spin at every given opportunity. But though one other driver spun out of turn 4, it never felt like it wanted to snap on me. I also feared I would be incapable of having fun, being petrified by the speed of it. But it turned out to be the most fun I ever had in a day!

Maybe regularly driving in sims helped, I don’t know. But in the end I felt pretty comfortable with pushing the car a bit. I even overtook That Dude With a Custom Carbon Helmet™, which, as you probably know from any karting session, is the most rewarding feeling known to man.


The car just felt like it wanted me to push, and it did everything to gain my trust. On the last few laps of the day, when I was really confident to go at it, it felt like it really came alive. Before that, the car felt really obedient, somewhat transparent to my inputs. Which is great because it’s pretty reassuring. But when I pushed harder, it began to have a personality of its own, sometimes fighting back, sometimes encouraging me to push harder. The relationship wasn’t simple inputs from me and simple execution from the car, but really more two-sided. What a feeling.

Because everything is so direct, it’s like your brain is directly wired to the car. But not in a video-gamey way, because the G-forces, vibrations, noises and even smells were very real. In the end, these are what I remember the most, not the speed. Everytime I daydream about this day (and I do that A LOT), the first image that comes to mind is my legs being pushed to the side of the car in turn 2, or having to fight the wheel in Pouas.


But because pushing as hard as I dared I came nowhere close the real limits of the car, I respect even more the guys who do this at a serious level. Seeing them throw the car around, sliding everywhere is just unbelievable. The amount of talent and work it must take to be able to say “yeah, the FR2.0, I did that when I was a kid, but y’know, pretty slow thing” must be immense. To F1 drivers, this is probably not much more than a basic rental kart. To me, it was probably the best car I’ll ever drive.



Oh, what a day. What a lovely day.



When driving back from the track in a scorching heat and without A/C, the only thing I could think of is that I had to do it again one day. Now, a few months later, I still can’t believe I got to drive a single-seater in anger like that. And when I sit on my bed, dreaming about how it went and how I definitely should do it again, I put myself in that semi-reclined position and make car noises in my head.



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