Although this might look like Charles Leclerc ripping down the highway, this “Ferrari” race car isn’t a Formula 1 car. It is actually a GP2 car dressed to look like a retro F1 car from the Michael Schumacher days. Even though this isn’t a proper F1 driving down a highway in the Czech Republic, it is still very dangerous and very illegal. 

Can you drive a race car on public roads? 

There are road-legal race cars, of course, but only a few. This Ferarri-dressed GP2 car is not one of them. Every aspect of this car is meant for controlled track work. It has massive slick tires, no blinkers, no headlights, and about 50 other red flags. 

Who is driving the GP2 car on the highway?

Not only is this car brazenly disobeying the law, but the Czech authorities report that this wild driver is a repeat offender. The authorities still haven’t caught the driver and, as such, are pretty upset that they have evaded the law multiple times. The last report of this person taking their GP2 car out to run errands was in 2019. 

According to The Drive, Police tracked down the owner back then but couldn’t prove who was driving because the culprit was wearing a helmet. I guess if a helmet can count as an alibi, then why wouldn’t the driver try it again? Well, they obviously couldn’t come up with a good enough reason not to. 

What is a GP2 race car? 

The Drive mentions that although this one looks like an F1 car, it isn’t. The GP2 cars, now known as Formula 2, aren’t quite as gnarly as the F1 cars, but they are close. Formula 2 is a spec series, meaning that major components of the cars, like chassis and engine, must conform to the standard. This makes the playing field level. The cars are matched on spec in order to highlight driver talent, not budget. 

The car in the video is estimated by the Drive to be a Dallara build featuring a naturally aspirated 4.0-liter V8. For this spec, the car would make 603 hp. This, paired with the extremely lightweight build of the car, makes this a thing closer to a rocket ship than a Toyota Camry. 

While clearly super illegal, the beginning of the video seems pretty tame as the race car follows a Lamborghini Aventador at a surprisingly reasonable pace. However, once the Lambo clears a path, the F2 car opens up, and the gravity of the situation settles in. The wail of that 4.0-liter V8 forces you to realize how serious this car really is. The mock Ferrari turns the highway into a GP course. 

Not a bad driver

Most interestingly, the mystery driver never does anything overly reckless outside of driving this car on the highway in the first place. You might expect the driver to be chopping corners and blasting Kias off the road at 1 billion mph. But it doesn’t. It really looks like the person took their car out of a weekend spin. It’s just that instead of a convertible classic, the weekend car is a fire-breathing dragon. Like, it might as well be a literal fire-breathing dragon. 

Aside from the clear dangers present here, the bigger aspect of this video that stands out is just how strange it is. Again, the driver isn’t acting wild. They seem to be commuting or something equally as banal. Strange indeed.