If you’re a racing fan, you’ve probably dreamed about driving a purpose-built racing car on a public road. It’s something even actual racing drivers never really get to experience themselves. Sure, several championships hold race events on street circuits, but those tracks are closed to track and lined with barriers to ensure everyone’s safety. The transfer stages on the World Rally Championship between competitive special stages are the only time when international race cars are legally driven in competition on open roads. They don’t always go smoothly. However, someone decided to take their chances and recently drove a Dallara GP2 car out on a highway.
In a video posted on Twitter, someone spotted a 2008 Dallara GP2/08 painted to resemble a Michael Schumacher-era Marlboro-branded Ferrari from the early 2000s. The GP2 Series (today Formula 2) is the direct feeder to the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, with Dallara being the sole chassis supplier for GP2 and F2 across the category’s combined 17-year history.
The Dallara can be seen in the footage cruising a highway speed before unleashing its full potential to accelerate past traffic. Honestly, the Dallara driver is safer than many other drivers I’ve seen. They aren’t weaving through traffic or trying to pass cars in the right lane. Apparently, the police haven’t been able to identify the driver of the very distinctive unregistered vehicle and this Dallara owner has done this in the past. Czech Police’s Ferrari 458 Italia would have been really useful in this situation.
You might wonder how someone got ahold of a 14-year-old GP2 car. Thanks to the category’s imposed regulations, teams must acquire their cars centrally through the championship’s promoter. This means a team can’t reduce costs by buying used equipment from another team. This restriction has partly been a factor in costs for drivers spiraling in the range of millions of dollars to compete. Used GP2 chassis tend to find their way into Boss GP, a lower-profile anything-goes single-seater racing series. GP2 cars make up the majority of race entries and are a relatively affordable alternative to the Formula 1 machines from the 1990s and 2000s that are also raced in Boss GP.