Video: Experience driving a ‘70s F3 car at Zandvoort

07th June 2023

Simon Ostler

There are few experiences in the world more exhilarating than driving at speed on a race track. You can multiply that exhilaration if you’re lucky enough to do so while sat in the cockpit of a proper single-seater racing car, though. Things get sent into the stratosphere if that race track happens to be the rollercoaster that is the legendary Zandvoort circuit.

While many of us have been lucky enough to get out on a race track before and experience a little of what it might be like to be a professional racing driver, it’s a far rarer opportunity to climb into an open-wheeled single-seater racing car and enjoy the sensations that come with skating along the floor as you look up at your front wheels.

It’s an otherworldly experience, and while we have the joy of our own very special Goodwood Motor Circuit, we can only sit back and wish that we could have just one lap at speed around this frankly incredible ribbon of tarmac.

Imagine how it must feel to weave through the varying cambers at scarily high speed as the car twitches and slides around underneath you. This is pure driving, too, with a manual gearbox to manage in this particular March Formula 3 car that would have been at the peak of its powers almost half a century ago.

We only get to enjoy one lap here, but it’s a lap that you could play on repeat over and over again in an endless cycle of vicarious enjoyment.

Welcome to Goodwood Elevenses, a helping of motoring-related amusement to help break up your day. Watch the last video: Incredible driver’s‑eye view of Porsche Carrera Cup at Spa