Red Bull has paraded two of its Formula One racing cars on public roads and streets in The Netherlands, and along a beach near the Dutch Grand Prix track, Zandvoort.
Filmed in January
The trip, which was filmed and photographed in January, was supposed to have been a publicity stunt ahead of the return of Formula One racing to the Zandvoort track, which was last used in 1985. The return has been fuelled, in no small part, by the rise to super-stardom of Red Bull driver, and local boy, Max Verstappen.
In 'Dutch Road Trip: Port to Zandvoort', Max takes his teammate, Alex Albon, on a whistle-stop tour of historic and memorable locations across his home country. The two tear through the port of Rotterdam, over narrow dykes passing windmills, through giant tulip greenhouses and straight into the centre of The Hague. Along the way, they meet old acquaintances and do donuts outside the Royal Noordeinde Palace, all while driving two F1 cars.
Old chassis, new colours
Critically, these are not current F1 cars, as driving them would count as in-season testing and that's verboten, Verstappen. Instead, the cars were RB7 and RB8 chassis, from the 2011 and 2012 seasons, but repainted to match Red Bull's current paint scheme. That means they were actually using the old (and much-noisier) Renault 2.4-litre V8 engines, not the current 1.6-litre turbocharged Honda hybrid engines.
After the on-road driving session, there was time for a little off-roading, with Alex and Max taking the cars onto the beach at Scheveningen, along with fellow Red Bull star and motocross legend Jeffrey Herlings, who actually jumped his KTM bike over the two F1 cars.
The trip ended at Zandvoort, where, sadly, there won't be any racing this weekend, although there are now hopes for a revival of F1 racing later in the summer, hopefully at the Austrian Grand Prix in July.
Driving on the beach
Max Verstappen said: "If we can't race then I think it's great to put something out there for our fans. It's very cool to show everyone a bit of Holland with this Dutch Road Trip. Normally you only see F1 cars on a racetrack, but we do crazy stuff on snow, on the beach."
On the prospect of the 2020 season getting underway, the Dutchman added: "Of course, we are very much looking forward to going racing again once it is safe. We were all very much looking forward to having a home grand prix in the Netherlands but hopefully later in the year or whenever it's possible to race again we can get that started."
Albon said of his own part in the film: "We filmed this in January, and it was great fun. I think the film has turned out brilliantly and I hope everyone enjoys it. Hopefully when the season starts again, they, the fans, will be as ready as we are."