In the fitness centre at the futuristic McLaren Mercedes team headquarters outside Woking in Surrey, there is a strange-looking contraption among the cross-trainers and weights benches that would not look out of place in a medieval torture chamber.

The “Technogym” Formula One driver-trainer is a piece of equipment that Lewis Hamilton knows all too well, after spending hours on it building up his neck and body muscles to cope with the large G-forces to which drivers are subjected in Formula One cars.

With 12 days to go until the opening grand prix of the season, in Australia, Hamilton was on hand yesterday to give The Times a chance to experience the machine during a session in the gym in which McLaren offered a unique insight into the punishing fitness regime adhered to by the Englishman and Heikki Kovalainen, his new team-mate.

With an old Hamilton racing helmet on, decked out in his trademark smoky yellow, I climbed into what is effectively a cockpit complete with steering wheel and foot rests. Then Hamilton attached a series of bungee cords to the helmet - two on each side and one each at the front and back - at the other end of which are weights. The steering wheel is connected by bungee to pulleys and weights.

As you turn the wheel and turn your head in the direction of an imaginary corner, the machine replicates the pull of gravity that at some tracks can be the equivalent of more than four times a driver's head weight. With 7.5kg on my head plus the weight of the helmet and 17.5kg on the wheel, I found it manageable, but I quickly got into trouble with the young man who finished agonisingly close to an unprecedented World Championship title in his rookie season last year.

“Pull your head up, man,” Hamilton, 23, said, laughing, “or you won't be able to see where you are going.” For a few seconds, as I turned the “car” this way and that, sometimes holding the angle as you would on a long bend, I thought that it was not too bad. Then Hamilton reminded me that at a typical track he would make the same movements as I was attempting up to 18 times during one lap.

In a grand prix, he may make some 1,260 movements during a 70-lap race while also busy braking, accelerating and contending with the intense heat from the engine. No wonder Gerry Convy, one of the trainers at McLaren, talks of Formula One drivers requiring the upper-body strength of a boxer, the cardiovascular capability of a triathlete and the reaction times of a fighter pilot.

Hamilton, who will lead the charge for the title principally against the Ferrari pairing of Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa this season, talked his way through a typical corner. “When you come into it, you are going flat out,” he said. “You hit the brakes and your whole body comes almost off your seat. As you come to the apex, the pressure on your body and neck just builds. Once you get to the apex, the Gs are coming from the front and you are trying to hold your head up. The force is still on your arms, but it has gone from going forward to being chucked backwards.” The “Technogym” brought that gruelling process vividly to life.

Under Convy's watchful eye, I had earlier completed an exhausting two-hour workout in the gym, with cardiovascular exercise interspersed with weights routines designed to strengthen muscles used by drivers, particularly in the arms and neck. Hamilton and Kovalainen would complete a similar routine, but at double the intensity.

Hamilton did his bit for the cameras but was also at the team base to confer with his engineers before he leaves for Melbourne today. Midway through the session, Ron Dennis, the 60-year-old McLaren team principal, appeared and demonstrated his excellent fitness, holding testing stretch positions longer than men 12 years his junior.

Dennis has been the subject of intense speculation that he may step aside after 28 years in control at McLaren, but he said he has not made any decision on his future and expects to be travelling to Australia as normal.

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