Watch The Honda Red Bull Racing F1 Car Hooning Around New York City
Every New York City driver has sat in traffic wondering, How fast I could drive if this road were empty? Well, the Honda Red Bull Formula 1 team found out. In the latest of the legendary Red Bull stunts, the team took over several Manhattan roads for a race car demonstration. Naturally, the Red Bull Racing driver could not resist hooning around the city: revving between buildings and even doing a 180 into a parking spot.
Red Bull F1 racing
One of the world’s most exciting motorsports is Formula One. The Red Bull Honda F1 team is among the sport’s best. Red Bull Racing (RBR) was the first Austrian team to win the F1 title back in 2010 and dominated the sport through 2013. Red Bull Honda’s current drivers are Max Verstappen and Sergio “Checo” Perez.
More recently, Mercedes has been the F1 team to beat. So for the 2021 season, Red Bull Racing re-engineered the Red Bull Racing RB16B F1 car. The new vehicle boasts advanced aerodynamics with a narrower nose and tapered tail. The team will also continue racing Honda engines, though RBR will be maintaining the powerplants on its own.
The vehicle redesign is paying off. In the 2021 season, Red Bull is currently ahead. As of October, Max Verstappen has outscored defending champion, Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton. So will RBR win the 72nd F1 season? We’ll have to wait and find out.
Hooning around New York City in an F1 car
Early on the morning of October 11th, Red Bull Racing posted the above video to Twitter. It shows an F1 driver revving through a pre-dawn skyscraper canyon, caption: “Can you guess the location?”
Then the team shared a video of the RBR Formula One car cruising along an empty divided highway. Morning traffic is continuing in the other direction.
Many commenters loved the Facebook video of the Red Bull F1 car in Manhattan. But one user, presumably familiar with the road, asked, “What about the potholes?” Of course, a NYC pothole would be a sad way for the expensive Red Bull car to sustain damage.
Finally, the RBR team posted an Instagram video showing off its F1 parking skills. But the driver is not practicing standard, parallel parking. Instead, the driver notices a spot, guns the engine, and completes a 180 degree drift into the open parking space.
Red Bull has not disclosed whether the driver behind the wheel for the NYC stunts was Verstappen, Perez, or someone else entirely. However, we hope the potential champion is safely at home, resting up. He will need all his strength for the upcoming United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas.
Red Bull Racing’s other famous stunts
Last summer, an unauthorized Red Bull drifting stunt put bystanders in danger and damaged a UNESCO world heritage site. The result was the Red Bull cars confiscated by the Ukrainian government.
More recently, Red Bull set five world records when stunt pilot Dario Costa flew through a tunnel! In a modified Zivko Edge 540, the Italian pilot flew through a highway tunnel with mere feet of clearance on each side.
Both Verstappen and Perez have experience navigating city streets in the Red Bull Racing F1 car. Several famous Formula One races take place on “street circuits” or closed-off areas of cities. Current F1 street circuits include Singapore, Melbourne, Montreal, Sochi and the Monaco Grand Prix. Someday, could we see a Formula One race in New York City? Stranger things have happened. Now we know RBR would be ready.
