F1 drivers using cocaine?

January 3, 2005 10:47 AM

must drive fast faster faster The use of cocaine is widespread among Formula One drivers, a former Ferrari team doctor has claimed. Although random FIA tests have never returned a positive result, Benigno Bartoletti said in Rome that 'as many as one third' of the current field take the drug as a stimulant prior to grands prix.
posted by halekon (29 comments total)

Bah, they should be taking meth. Lasts quite a bit longer.
posted by botono9 at 10:59 AM on January 3, 2005

Seriously! They having to pull over every 15 minutes to do another couple of lines... or are they hooked up to an IV drip?
posted by psmealey at 11:00 AM on January 3, 2005

Bah, they should be taking meth. Lasts quite a bit longer.
posted by botono9 at 1:59 PM EST on January 3

Right. Nothing like lithium and Draino for a quality high.
posted by orange clock at 11:02 AM on January 3, 2005

It's probably easy to pass a random drug test when it only takes 2-3 days to clear your system.
posted by Gooney at 11:06 AM on January 3, 2005

I don't know, after the New Year's Eve fun, I think I might be addicted to Silly String. That stuff packs a punch!

As for Formula One guys snorting coke to go faster. I'm glad that they are racing against each other. I'd think the roller coaster effect would be more dangerous to them then not doing the drugs at all.

On Preview: Gooney, yep, coke's nice like that but that nasty old weed will hang out for a month!
posted by fenriq at 11:07 AM on January 3, 2005

I'm unconvinced. Have you ever heard a F1 driver interviewed? Jesus Lord. A little bit of the funny talcum might elevate the boring buggers above the single-syllable monotone platitudes they normally dispense. Maybe they're just coming down, but for my money, if anybody's been ignoring Grandmaster Flash's admonition, it's the F1 commentators...
posted by flashboy at 11:14 AM on January 3, 2005

when we were kids we would get hopped up on coke and/or speed and derby the ol' power wheels for hours on end.

i remember the time 3 of us piled into the red radio flyer and ended up totaling it at the bottom of the hill.
posted by nearo at 11:16 AM on January 3, 2005

orange clock (and fyi for Formula 1 MeFites not already in the know) - Adderall has all the amphetamines anyone could need. It's made in nice clean labs and kid tested!
posted by 31d1 at 11:40 AM on January 3, 2005

Two words:

Bull
Shit
posted by Relay at 11:48 AM on January 3, 2005

I'm having a lot of trouble myself believing F1 drivers would do something so risky and dangerous.
posted by bobo123 at 12:38 PM on January 3, 2005

I wouldn't be surprise to find cocaine in their entertainment after leaving the circuits....imagine spending a life at 300km/h..what else can give you an adrenaline rush , if what you love in your job and keeps you from thinking "damn I'm going to die in a split second" is adrenaline ?

On a tangent: I like rally better, it's rougher and more difficult I guess.
posted by elpapacito at 1:07 PM on January 3, 2005

This is trickle down from the military. Pemoline was used by ww2 pilots.
posted by hortense at 1:21 PM on January 3, 2005

I'm having a lot of trouble myself believing F1 drivers would do something so risky and dangerous.

Ha. But given the image of the modern F1 driver as a boring fitness fanatic (when someone actually quaffs a beer it's newsworthy, and most have fitness programs as rigorous as any professional athlete) I do have trouble believing this. Given the astonishing levels of cash in F1, people looking for an unfair advantage is to be expected. But I'd assume it was something more, well, precise than blow.
posted by jalexei at 1:35 PM on January 3, 2005

elpapacito: " ...what else can give you an adrenaline rush , if what you love in your job and keeps you from thinking "damn I'm going to die in a split second" is adrenaline ?"

That's not the way racers think at all.

I've been in and around racing my whole life, and I've never met a racer who's out there solely for the rush, and none of them believe that what keeps them from dieing is the adrenaline.

A racer thinks that what keeps him from dieing his their innate skill and ability.

jalexei: " ... and most have fitness programs as rigorous as any professional athlete ... "

Actually, racers ARE professional athletes. Not only are they some of the most physically fit people on the planet, but the stresses and strains put on their bodies are only exceed by fighter pilots in combat maneuvering.

Just to give one example, a modern GP drivers heart rate is 180 - 184 beats per minute for the entirety of the 90 - 120 minute race, with occasional spikes into the low 190s in extreme situations (i.e. near-accidents).

If someone doesn't think racing is a sport, or that it's just like what they do during their commute only faster, they don't know what the hell their talking about.
posted by Relay at 1:51 PM on January 3, 2005

Never strapped yourself into a racecar have you bobo123? Drivers are perpetual teenagers; they never think something bad will happen to them. Still the blow seems unlikely, at least pre race, too uncontrolled.

Blundell agreed with you elpapacito "Rallying can make F1 look very tame - when you're going 85 mph and faced with a 180 degree hairpin, a one in four gradient and a near vertical drop on one side, it's hairy stuff!" -- Mark Blundell commenting on the learning curve he faces as a new WRC driver. Blundell wrecked three times in practice. And he didn't finish his first WRC event.

In rally we call those extreme situations "moments". As in "I crested the left 5 double caution at about 130 and there was a cow in the line. Luckly the co-driver saw it in time for me to ditch hook around the beast. That was quite the moment."
posted by Mitheral at 2:00 PM on January 3, 2005

This doesn't surprise me. When we got the "drugs are bad" lecture while we were training to drive buses, the first thing the trainer said about coke is that it (unlike pot, heroin and the other drugs we were being told about) actually improves your driving ability.

Coke lets you think faster, make quicker decisions and be slightly faster at avoiding accidents. The only downside, we were told, was that it made a driver far more aggressive on the road.

But it seems like all of that would be a perfect fit for a race car driver.
posted by thecaddy at 2:19 PM on January 3, 2005

Actually, racers ARE professional athletes.

I know - And I meant to imply they are among the fittest of them - apologies if that was muddled.

Blundell agreed with you elpapacito

As to Blundell, 32 points in 61 starts hardly set the world alight, but he's certainly a better driver than, say me. (I kid because I love, WRC is a blast to watch, more interesting than F1 of late)

This doesn't surprise me. When we got the "drugs are bad" lecture while we were training to drive buses, the first thing the trainer said about coke is that it (unlike pot, heroin and the other drugs we were being told about) actually improves your driving ability.

You were really told that in some official capacity? Cool.
posted by jalexei at 2:26 PM on January 3, 2005

Has anyone made a joke about "white lines" yet, because I don't want to be the first.
posted by drezdn at 2:32 PM on January 3, 2005

Well, if it is true, and it's 1/3rd of the drivers, I think we can safely assume Raikonnen is one of the other 2/3. That might explain some of Sato's patented Banzai moves, though...
posted by Swervo at 2:38 PM on January 3, 2005

this would explain the inflated nature of certain drivers' egos . . if it is true.
posted by Dom at 2:41 PM on January 3, 2005

This does seem very unlikely. Cocaine isn't that great at focusing as a motorcycling friend of mine will attest to, nor does it last nearly long enough and I highly doubt they're sniffing it off the steering wheel every fifteen to twenty minutes. It's also not clever to be on coke while your body is already under stress, drivers loose an incredible amount of fluid during racers. I also don't see the owners tolerating it since a single bust means their sponsors will flee, not to mention that they'd be unlikely to entrust a million dollar vehicle to a coke-head.
posted by Vaska at 2:48 PM on January 3, 2005

What's Eric Clapton's opinion on this one?
posted by thedevildancedlightly at 4:10 PM on January 3, 2005

Add me to the list of people who thinks this is BS. In a sport where a driver smoking a cigar post victory is newsworthy, I find it hard to believe that drugs are taken. These guys are watched carefully day in, day out. As Vaska says, the companies involved in F1 are very high profile and can not afford such a scandal.

Anyway as they say in the F1 world, until it's on Atlas F1's main site it's bullshit. There's a discussion on this topic in Atlas F1's forum.
posted by riffola at 4:22 PM on January 3, 2005

orange clock (and fyi for Formula 1 MeFites not already in the know) - Adderall has all the amphetamines anyone could need. It's made in nice clean labs and kid tested!
posted by 31d1 at 11:40 AM PST on January 3


You ever try to rail that crap? Talk about blue boogers and a somewhat happy fight-or-flight response for an hour. It's fun for a weekend when you need to clean your house but you are only fucking your dosage up, making it harder to keep your ADD at bay. I should know, I did it over christmas and learned not to do it again.
posted by Dean Keaton at 9:14 PM on January 3, 2005

Definitely not believable. Not only does the 'high' not last long enough, the friggin' down would be enough to drive some of these guys right into a wall. Oh wait...maybe it is believable.
posted by j.p. Hung at 10:21 PM on January 3, 2005

So how do I get into this race car driving thing that I've heard so much about?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:35 PM on January 3, 2005

build a race car first
posted by Dom at 12:55 AM on January 4, 2005

my vote goes to startin on a bmw 2002
posted by Dom at 12:59 AM on January 4, 2005

I don't doubt it. Europe is much more accepting of what to US nervious nellies are known as "hard drugs". (Maybe because the coke tends to be so much better in Europe?) And as someone pointed out, cocaine does improve your reflexes in racing type situations. Everyone seems to think drivers would have to keep redosing, but why do you think they'd have to snort it? Cocaine works fine dissolved in liquid and drank. There's all them pit stops, folks.
posted by telstar at 2:17 AM on January 4, 2005