MOTOGP: Lorenzo tries Mercedes F1 car

From 1956 through 1960, Englishman John Surtees won four 500cc titles for MV Agusta before ultimately moving on to four wheel racing and winning the 1964 Formula 1 title in the Scuderia Ferrari 158. As has been well documented, Surtees is the only racer is history to win world championships in both disciplines.

Today at the Silverstone Circuit in England, it was silver shades of John Surtees as reigning MotoGP World Champion Jorge Lorenzo of the Movistar Yamaha MotoGP team put his mighty YZR-M1 motorcycle aside to climb into the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 W05 Hybrid race car which powered Lewis Hamilton to 11 victories and the 2014 title.

"First of all I want to say thank you to Monster Energy for giving me this opportunity," said Lorenzo, a five-time Federation Internationale de Motocyclisme world champion of his jaunt out onto the 3.661-mile, 18-turn circuit. "It has been a great experience, like a dream come true.

"The past few days for me have been very special. I had the opportunity to work alongside some of the best engineers in this sport, drove the F2 car, had simulator test sessions and finally, I got to drive the real deal.

Normally accustomed to his 1000cc, 240-horsepower, 346-pound YZR-M1, Lorenzo, who currently sits third in the 2016 MotoGP standings, found the 1,523-pound F1 W05 incredibly agile and nimble

"I'm very satisfied with the lap time in the last run," he said. "From what the engineers were saying, my times were really competitive. The car is so smooth, I expected a more twitchy and difficult car, but in the end everything was so good: the steering wheel, the engine, everything."

Pinned into the car's molded carbon fiber and honeycomb composite cockpit via a six-point driver safety harness, Lorenzo, in one glorious white knuckled lap after another, found the car and its performance completely exhilarating.

"It was quite easy to drive and the car in the corners is really, really fast and the grip of the car - it's unreal," he said. "In the first lap you feel the power but when you get used to it, it's similar to a MotoGP bike but in the corners, you are in a different world, about 40km/h (25mph) faster in the middle of the corners. Also, it surprised me how late you can brake, and the amount of grip the car can support in full throttle in the fast corners is insane."

Overseeing Lorenzo's big day out was Mercedes AMG Petronas Track Engineer Richard Lane, who said, "It's been great working with Jorge today. From the moment he arrived he's been full of enthusiasm and keen to get stuck in. Between each run he's been poring over the data, and looking to find areas for improvement. You can see why he's a multiple world champion on two wheels. His interest in the detail of his performance has been impressive. He's taken feedback on board and improved with every run."

As an interesting side note, during the winter of 2006, Formula 1 world champion Michael Schumacher of the Scuderia Ferrari outfit helped talk Valentino Rossi into testing the Italian outfit's F2004 car at Valencia, Spain. Rossi, who is now Lorenzo's teammate, was so impressive that he actually contemplated giving up his chosen sport to pursue an F1 career. As history has taught us, he did not. One has to wonder how enchanted Jorge Lorenzo was with today's "tryout."

For the record, as a pole winner at the 2016 Formula 1 British Grand Prix, defending World Champion Lewis Hamilton and his Mercedes F1 W07 stopped the Silverstone clocks with a flying lap of 1:29.287. In contrast, 2016 British MotoGP pole ace Cal Crutchlow lit up the Silverstone timing monitors with a lap times of 2:19.265.