FIT FOR PURPOSE

How fit do you need to be to drive a Formula 1 car? Marathon man JAMES ATTWOOD goes up against Alpine Fl's Paul Aron

- JAMES ATTWOOD

It’s not long after Paul Aron, Alpine’s Formula 1 reserve driver, arrives in the gym at the team's Enstone factory that I realise I’m in trouble.

“What's the record?” he asks as the first exercise is explained to us. Turns out Aron is 21, ultra-fit and hugely competitive. Of course he is: he’s a racing driver. Racing drivers are competitive at everything, even when taking on a random car journalist in a fitness challenge. Win? I just want to survive.

With hindsight, this was never going to end well. The basic idea was that both racing drivers and car journalists drive cars for a living - and some people insist that you don’t have to be very fit to drive a car. So we wanted to find out how important fitness really is in F1. After all, teams now employ ranks of trainers, sports scientists and nutritionists to help drivers cope with the incredible forces of a grand prix car and perform at their peak.

You won't find many sports scientists on the average new car launch, which could be why ‘launch paunch’ is common industry parlance. Still, having once been a lot bigger than I am now, I like to keep fit and can run a marathon in just over three hours, which is, without trying to sound boastful, quite a bit quicker than average. Rats.

Clement Le Viennesse, a doctoral student in sports science, is on hand to put us through a workout devised by one of Alpine's driver coaches. We start with neck work, using a flex strength machine. Aron and I take turns to don a head harness that looks a bit like a rugby prop’s scrum cap. Le Viennesse then hooks it to a short elasticated cable that is, in turn, attached to some weights. We have to sidestep away from the machine and then perform lunges, keeping our neck straight to build strength in the muscles without hurting them.