Living the fast life with the Michelin Pilot Experience

Sepang Circuit, Malaysia—It’s the ultimate dream of every car enthusiast. Or at least every car enthusiast who can’t afford to go on a track day with real honest-to-goodness race cars or even single-seater Formula cars.

But that is exactly what the Michelin Pilot Experience (MPE) allows you. Want to play “Touring Car racer?” Go ahead and play. Rally cars toot your horn? Consider it done. Want to go whole hog and be an open-wheel Formula racer for a day? MPE will let you do just that.

And that is precisely what I went through one glorious day just very recently. The best part of the deal is that everything happens inside a real Formula One track—the venue of the Malaysian Grand Prix, no less

The Michelin Pilot Experience all starts with the usual trackside safety and technical briefing. Drive as fast as your skill and confidence allow you. You may overtake other participants—but you can never, under any circumstances, overtake the pace car. Of course no one wants to come home with the dubious distinction of crumpling hyper-expensive machinery—let alone injure, maim or, heaven forbid, kill oneself or other drivers in the process. 

Then it’s suiting up time. We slip inside real fire-retardant racing suits, put on racing gloves and balaclavas, then finally, a helmet. Then it’s off to the track!

Setting eyes on any of the race cars will get the high octane truly flowing through your veins. We get to drive a Renault Clio Cup car, a Citroen C2 Junior World Rally Championship (JWRC) rally car, and top that off with hot laps in a Formula Michelin (a.k.a. Formula Renault) open-wheel race car. There are Toyota 86’s, Porsche 911’s (including a GT3 race car), and even a Lotus Evora—but these all served as pace cars driven by highly capable—by “highly capable,” that means they’re highly capable of embarrassing you even if you are in a faster Formula car—instructors which included former race drivers. It’s a humbling experience—no cocky show-boating here.

I got to try out the Clip Cup car first. It’s a 1000-kg Touring-class race car that pumps out 220 hp, accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h in four seconds, and hits a top speed of 220 km/h. The engine is connected to a racing sequential gearbox that takes a hefty push or pull to shift gears. It takes a bit of getting used to as you need to use the clutch to downshift but not to upshift—easy in city driving but a tad confusing when you’re hurtling through Sepang’s S curves at high speed and need to brake hard, downshift a gear or two, then upshift again—accelerating hard—in rapid-fire sequence. The Clio Cup car rides on 17-inch Michelin racing slicks—and they bite the tarmac like no other tire I have ever experienced.

Then it was off to the Citroen C2 rally car at a purpose-built dirt rally stage inside the Sepang complex. The tiny Citroen may seem cute and dainty at first glance, but it’s a mean, little race car that sounds like an angry swarm of bees at speed. It develops “only” 150 hp but is barely saddled by a featherweight 650kg of car so it goes like hell as well. Pretty soon I was hurtling it through sweeping turns with the tail happily sideways while creating a rooster-tail of flying dirt and gravel. The Michelin rally tires bit into the dirt with surprising effectiveness—you never feel like you’re losing control even with the car slewing this way and that. It’s the rubber that really made us all look like world rally champions.

I was fortunate to have drawn what I consider the ultimate drive of the day for last. It’s the Formula car. I’ve done lots of karting in my life but never a real open-wheel race car. Just like in F1, you need to remove the steering wheel to get in. And just like in F1, you need a pit crew to buckle you in and start the engine. Then I’m off.

Formula Renault cars weigh all of 480kg and develop 200 hp. If a 1-ton 200-hp Toyota 86 accelerates from 0 to 100 in a little over six seconds, the lightweight Formula car can do the deed in just 3.5. In other words, flooring the gas pedal in this bullet is akin to, yes, being shot out of a gun. It’s insanely fast, and the corners come up startlingly soon. Braking and cornering—aided and abetted by gummy Michelin racing slicks—are simply out of this world. The car corners on the order of 3 to 4 g’s, so you feel your helmeted head being yanked by some invisible hand with tremendous force. It’s simply the ultimate adrenaline rush.

Try as I might, though, I just couldn’t catch the Porsche GT3 that was pacing me. It had double my horsepower, but my much lighter car should’ve eaten it up in the tight corners. I was already busy fighting oversteer, yet the Porsche seemed rock stable even during hard cornering. That car’s Michelins were absolutely glued to the road—and its driver leagues better than me. As I said, a humbling experience.

Then, sooner than I would have wanted, the pace car was peeling in to the pits and I had to reluctantly follow. Still, it was a most memorable experience. And one that made me appreciate and respect the delicate and all-too-crucial relationship between car and road. And that all hinges on that patch of rubber we all too often take for granted. Hats off to you, Michelin, for the unforgettable Pilot Experience!