It’s not every day that you see a Hollywood megastar driving a racing car. Sure, many of them own one (or 10) supercars, and some, like former 90210 Beverly Hills lead Jason Priestley and Grey’s Anatomy Dr. Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd, aka Patrick Dempsey, double in motor racing as a hobby.

And no one can forget the late Paul Newman who competed as a professional racing driver from 1972 until 2005 winning, among other things, his class in the 24 hours of Daytona at the age of 70 years and 8 days. He was also the co-founder and owner of the successful Newman/Haas Racing Champ Car team.

But this is 2011 and, even though the Oprah and Scientology debacles have caused a lot of controversy, Tom Cruise remains a mega movie star. Therefore, it was quite surprising that he took a break from filming the fourth Mission Impossible movie, titled “Ghost Protocol”, to drive a Red Bull Formula 1 car in California’s Willow Springs track.

Former F1 driver David Coulthard was his instructor and he seems to have done a good job, since Tom’s top speed was just 4 mph (6 km/h) slower than Coulthard’s, and when he got used to the car and the track, despite an outing on the gravel, he improved his lap time by 11 seconds.

Well, maybe that will inspire him to film a Days of Thunder sequel or, even better, a movie about F1. You can watch the 6 minutes video after the jump.

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