The driver of the so-called ‘phantom race car’ has been arrested after six years of driving an open-wheeled race car on public highways in the\u00a0Czech Republic. The police have now released a statement listing the reasons for the arrest.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 51-year-old was arrested on Sunday morning in Buk, a village close to Prague, following reports of a Ferrari Formula 1 car being driven to a fuel station near the town of Dobris. With several police units, including a helicopter, deployed to the location, the driver of the machine was arrested.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Two minutes after the first report, another caller reported that the formula car was speeding along the D4 highway in the direction toward P\u0159\u00edbram,” said lieutenant Michaela Richterov\u00e1, spokesperson for the Czech Police Central Bohemian Region.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The car was in fact a Dallara chassis, built for the GP2 racing series and used between 2008 and 2010. Being a feeder series to F1 – now rebranded as Formula 2 – this was a spec car boasting approximately 620 horsepower thanks to a Mecachrome-built V8 and weighing in at 688 kg.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
This specific machine featured a Ferrari livery, including decals of the brands Shell and\u00a0Marlboro.<\/p>\n
“He was later identified as a 51-year-old man and taken to the police station in P\u0159\u00edbram to provide an explanation,” Richterov\u00e1 continued. Video footage of the arrest showed the driver in the car wearing a full race suit and helmet, arguing with officers before he was detained. He failed to provide a statement to the police at the station.<\/p>\n
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“They entered our private land and violated our rights, in my opinion it was completely unnecessary and illegal,” the driver’s son, Luk\u00e1\u0161, told reporters<\/a> after his father’s arrest.<\/p>\n “The events have always gone without any problems. Everyone knows very well that formula has been running on the highway in the Czech Republic since 2019 and people will have to get used to it.<\/p>\n “It always drove at a maximum of 180 to 200 kmh and did not endanger anyone. It just drove and did not make dangerous manoeuvres,” he said<\/a>. “Other people drive much more dangerously today.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you had a car like that at home, you wouldn\u2019t just want to look at it. For me, just because a car isn\u2019t built for the highway doesn\u2019t mean it can\u2019t be driven on it. Not by a long shot. Drivers who drive at 30 mph on country roads are far more dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The two run a YouTube channel, TrackZone, which features the car being driven, with the last video showing the moment the police found the car. The channel has 15,700 subscribers from 103 videos at the time of writing. Its most popular video, showing the Dallara travelling on the motorway at high speed, has received almost 800,000 views.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Racing cars of this type are not legally allowed to be driven on roads because they do not meet the legal technical requirements. The formula car has sharp edges and does not have lights, turning signal lights, licence plates or other important safety features,”\u00a0Czech police explained in a statement upon the owner’s arrest, which will likely result in a fine of\u00a05,000 to 10,000 Czech koruna and a six-month driving ban according to a report by CNN<\/a>.<\/p>\n “Driving a formula car or other such racing car is dangerous not only for the driver himself, but also for other road users.”<\/p>\n In this article<\/p>\n Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics<\/p>\n Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The driver of the so-called ‘phantom race car’ has been arrested after six years of driving an open-wheeled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,2331,817,813,816,1510,85,1511,92418],"class_list":["post-133714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-culture","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-nosyndicate","tag-sports","tag-trendingteam","tag-u2018f1u2019-phantom-racer-driver-faces-ban-as-video-shows-confrontation-with-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}