Red Bull keeps finding creative ways to entertain us. The team’s latest video features Max Verstappen piloting a Formula 1 racecar on Silverstone Circuit as the world’s fastest FPV drone tried to keep up with the car by flying at 350 km/h (217 mph). Have a look, you’ll be impressed.
The drone was designed by Red Bull Advanced Technologies with assistance from Dutch Drone Gods. In terms of pure acceleration, it is actually twice as fast than the car itself with a 0-300 km/h (0-186 mph) time of four seconds.
In its unmodded form, the quadcopter maxes out at 180 km/h (112 mph), but that’s not nearly fast enough to keep up with an F1 car. Furthermore, according to the engineers, it doesn’t carry enough energy on board for a full 5.8-kilometer (3.6-mile) long Silverstone lap.
That’s why the team that worked on creating the world’s fastest aerial drone had to address a host of tech issues and design challenges. Aside from the above, they had to make sure it could keep up with the car darting erratically along the track, alternating between braking and sprinting. The video highlights the individual stages of its development and field tests.
In the races that followed, Red Bull pitted the drone up against its latest F1 car, the RB20, driven by David Coulthard. The first race was in a straight line. Then Max Verstappen joined in for a full lap run. The performance of the drone was impressive, to say the least.
As Verstappen commented at the end of the video, active use of such copters in Formula 1 could revolutionize the entire presentation of the Grand Prix, showing the cars from a completely different and exciting perspective.