Visitors to this year’s Adelaide Motorsport Festival will not only be able to pay for a ride in a Formula 1 car, but take a friend along too.
The three-seater Arrows AX3 will be at the event, which takes place in March the weekend before the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne. The Adelaide Motorsport Festival runs on a shortened version of the street circuit which held the country’s round of the world championship on 11 occasions from 1985 until 1995.Fans will be able to pay for a ride in one of the two passenger seats in the car, which are positioned either side of and behind the driver of the machine.
The AX3 was originally powered by a three-litre, 670bhp V10 engine fitted into a chassis adapted from the A20 raced by the team in the 1999 F1 season. At its launch in January 2001, Arrows claimed the car could reach 355kph (221mph), although more recent descriptions of its performance with its current 3.5-litre Hart V10 engine suggest a figure closer to 330kph (205mph).
The Tom Walkinshaw-run team folded the year after the AX3’s launch due to mounting debts and other financial problems. Multiple tubs were made for the three-seater, and at least two full show cars were used on tracks at the time for paying fans. They have since been sold, and the car in action in Adelaide has spent several years based in New Zealand doing demonstration runs there.
The Adelaide Motorsport Festival runs from March 25th-26th and will feature demonstrations of heritage Formula 1 cars, other open-wheel racers, touring cars, bikes and more. Cars will be pitted against each other in pairs in a Super Sprint contest around the track.
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Biskit Boy (@sean-p-newmanlive-co-uk)
4th January 2023, 13:33
I always preferred the Adelaide circuit to the Mebourne one.
amian
4th January 2023, 16:40
The Adelaide track is garbage. I’m certain it’s only 80’s/90’s nostalgia that keeps people liking it. Put current F1 there and people will hate it and pray for Melbourne to come back. Adelaide is short and tight with no proper straights. Its only redeeming quality is the Australian scenery, although even here it can’t compete with Melbourne.
Biskit Boy (@sean-p-newmanlive-co-uk)
5th January 2023, 9:10
Yep nostalgia plays a part for sure, but the general consensus of the drivers at the time was that Adelaide was one of the better circuits on the calendar and quite a challenge. I have always found Albert Park a bit boring, but each to their own.
Kringle
4th January 2023, 14:16
Nice to see that the roll hoops are lower than your skull. 💀
Stewart
5th January 2023, 11:44
……. and NO wishbone in front either – bloody scary !
S
5th January 2023, 12:29
These show cars almost never share the track with another vehicle…..
Unless there is the most unlikely catastrophic mechanical failure, they won’t be hitting anything.
Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
4th January 2023, 16:37
Come on Race Fans – you can make this happen.
I will drive it, but, I want Lewis and Max in the back seats …… and we all have open mikes :)
Short Circuit (@jjohn)
7th January 2023, 4:19
@nullapax
Any acceptances from @keithcollantine or Ida yet?
Racefans reporting live and exclusively from the Arrows aaaaaaaaarrrggghhh
(Hope live Mike’s were waterproof)
Qeki (@qeki)
4th January 2023, 19:48
I’m sorry but since someone said it I can’t unsee it. It looks like a Pokemon
paulguitar (@paulguitar)
5th January 2023, 9:33
How must does it cost for a ride in the F1 car?
AlanD
5th January 2023, 19:28
Hair-splitting mode. F1 is defined as single-seater racing. Therefore, you cannot have a “three-seater F1 car”. It also doesn’t have to comply with any of the other F1 regulations either, the ride height is probably miles higher than an actual F1 car, and you have to be sitting practically upright to fit three people into that space. So really it is just a car styled to look like an F1 car so that people with pots of money can buy a ride and then tell themselves they’ve been in an F1 car.
Andrey Baydin (@minilemm)
5th January 2023, 21:09
I’d still do it in a heartbeat. Wouldn’t you?
AlanD
7th January 2023, 14:57
@minilemm Andrey, oh, for sure, I’d jump at the chance to ride in one of those, it would be hugely exciting and as close as I’d ever get to the driver’s eye view of a racetrack, but I still wouldn’t be able to call it a formula one car.
Nick T:
6th January 2023, 21:08
The Minardi two-seater did ride along duty for years and years. Early on, Brundle used to often take people for hot laps. To me it’s crazy that F1 doesn’t have an OFFICIAL ride along car. Even if it weren’t made accessible to ordinary fans, I could see a lot of businessmen investing after experiencing what an F1 car does on track.
AlanD
7th January 2023, 15:00
Nick, I expect they’d be queueing up for a ride. When you look at the space tourism you can see that people will spend enough money to finance a small country for 90 minutes in space, so I expect the cost of a ride behind an F1 driver would seem like chicken feed.
Rhys Lloyd (@justrhysism)
10th January 2023, 7:19
I doubt I’ll be able to afford the fee, and at 193cm I think I’m too tall anyway—but would love to experience it.
Either way I’m keen to see the Festival back in action after the previous state government canned it for seemingly no reason other than it annoyed the nearby residents of whom the sitting premier represented.