Space Racers: Ricciardo and Verstappen visit NASA in Houston

There's nothing unusual about a Formula 1 driver shooting for the stars, so Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen felt quite in their element when they visited NASA's Johnson Space Center this week.

The incredible space facility located in Houston, just a few hours from COTA, has been the training ground for America's astronauts for more than fifty years.

It's also the home of Mission Control, the command centre responsible for all manned space missions since the US' Gemini projects of the mid-1960s.

The Red Bull boys started their tour with a simulated reduced gravity walk dispensed by NASA's Active Response Gravity Offload System (ARGOS) system.

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But the real treat was a test run in NASA's special Space Vehicles, something right up Danny Ric and Max's alley obviously.

"Driving that thing was really cool," enthused Max.

"There was a lot of travel of the suspension, so it was a lot of fun, you could really hit a lot of rocks. I really enjoyed it today."

They finished off their day with a visit to the massively impressive Mission Control center, which Ricciardo compared to Red Bull Racing's operations room in Milton Keynes.

"There really are a lot of similarities between this and F1, just the technology alone," said Daniel.

"It's really like what we have in the Ops Room in Milton Keynes. Even the safety technology is similar. The astronauts go through the same measurements, a similar kind of HANS device etc. It's really cool."

Check out the gallery of pictures below.