Jimmie Johnson and Fernando Alonso car swap

Hi, welcome to Bahrain International Circuit where we're doing the car swap between Fernando Alonso and Jimmy Johnson. You can see the two cars behind me, we've got Jimmy Johnson's NASCAR that's come all the way from the States and then we've got here a McLaren Formula One car behind me. This one's actually from 2013 so it's got a V8 engine. It's going to be really interesting to see how the two drivers get on in the different cars, you know, just looking at them you can see the big differences between them. We've got the NASCAR, big heavy car, big tyres, big heavy low revving V8 engine in the front and, you know, some downforce but not very much. Whereas we've got the Formula One car, much lighter, high revving engine, low torque, a lot of power but it all comes very late and obviously a lot of downforce so it'll be really interesting to see how Jimmy gets on. I'm going to be running him in the car. So my first run out, my NASCAR helmet, you know, I'm behind a windshield in that vehicle so I didn't have the proper things on the helmet to keep it on my head. So coming down the front straightaway as soon as I grabbed fifth gear, the helmet lifted up so far I was looking at my microphone so my talk microphone here was all the way up to my eyeline. I had to come in and we worked on a few things to get my helmet to stay on my head. There's so much air coming over the top of that car that it was literally trying to pull my helmet off. I think the biggest differences between the Formula One car and the stock car is the stock car is going to really, the accelerations and decelerations will be much more pronounced. Our cars don't have near the downforce the Formula One car has so the corner speeds will be much slower so we'll have to decelerate at a lot slower rate after watching Fernando on his install lap. The brake markers are probably going to be backed up seven or eight times what he had in the Formula One car. So yeah the pronounced lack of downforce in our car and the lack of grip is going to make for some interesting opportunities for Fernando to try to figure out how to drive it and interested in seeing his first impressions. So here we are at the Bahrain International Circuit swapping cars with Jimmy Johnson and me driving the Nascar for the first time. I did already two runs, it feels great, a lot of power, a lot of sliding so it's really fun to drive and now follow me we go for the third one. Just such a different experience and I don't think I'll stop smiling for months. The most epic experience I've ever had in motorsports in my life. It was almost like that when you're young and you had Christmas morning and that excitement you had running out to the Christmas tree when you're five or six years old, it was above that. So it was just the most epic day ever in the car. You know these cars they feel very different compared to the single-seaters, the Formula One but a lot of fun you know out there in the racetrack and very powerful cars, sliding around, very little grip so you know it feels amazing to drive. I had a lot of fun also following Jimmy's progress and you know it was a wonderful day so really really thank you to McLaren, to Henry Motorsport and all the sponsors.