Red Bull unveils World’s Fastest Drone ‘one shot’ on F1 film

Red Bull’s latest YouTube hit sees Max Verstappen driving a lap of Silverstone’s Grand Prix circuit while being filmed in an uninterrupted first-person-view (FPV) one shot by a manually piloted custom-built drone.

The drone had to keep up with the car at speeds of over 300km/h.

The behind-the-scenes build up to the shoot, and the shoot itself was captured for Red Bull by Glasgow’s Cut Media. The film has only been on YouTube for a day and has already been seen 4.3m times.

It took Red Bull and the production company Dutch Drone Gods more than a year to create a drone that could accelerate two times faster than an F1 car, reaching 300 km/h in just four seconds with a top speed of over 350 km/h.

The drone was further refined by Red Bull Advanced Technologies, a high-performance engineering arm of Oracle Red Bull Racing Formula 1 team.

It was flown on the shoot by pilot Ralph Hogenbirk, also known as Shaggy FPV.

Before filming Verstappen’s circuit, the drone was trialled behind RB8 and RB19 cars driven by Liam Lawson and David Coulthard.

The film brings viewers up close to the action, to capture the true speed of a F1 car in a view never seen before, marking the successful flight of a camera drone at such speed and duration.

“I never thought I’d see a drone going that quick just for camera footage,” said Verstappen. “I didn’t know it was following me whilst driving in the wet, and it was very close to me in some places. I was really surprised at how quickly it could keep up, and also how close it could get in the corners. It gives a bit of a different perspective to watching Formula One.”

Coulthard added: “When you see the big, wide, shots you lose perspective on the speed of the car. There are so many applications to really give the fans the feeling of what it’s like to be in one of these race cars. When you have the drone up close like that then you’re immersed in the whole experience. I’m sure in the not-too-distant future, we’re going to see this as part of our broadcast.”

Drone pilot Shaggy FPV, said: “This is a special drone because this is the only one with a fitted camera and goes this fast. It’s fully custom-built, it’s one-of-a-kind that we have developed. It is a very challenging project to create a drone that’s fast enough to keep up and keep the car in full frame, whilst capturing the shot in an interesting way. This was definitely the craziest shoot I’ve done so far.”