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Red Bull Racing F1 Car, Drift Cars and Stunt Bike Burned Rubber in Downtown Bucharest

Romania is a relatively big European country, located on the Eastern side of the continent. It's the twelfth largest one by area at 92,046 square miles (238,397 square km). To put things in perspective, it's slightly smaller than Michigan but bigger than Minnesota, for instance. Even so, there are only two big racetracks in the country, and neither has an F1 homologation. That means people rarely get to see an F1 car live unless there's a special occasion going on.
Red Bull Racing F1 Car, Drift Cars and Stunt Bike Burned Rubber in Downtown Bucharest 85 photos
Photo: Autoevolution
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And the Red Bull Racing Show Run is one of those special occasions. While some Romanians opted to fly to Italy to see the F1 race in Monza, others were going to get their chance in the capital city of Bucharest.

The energy drink company had announced they would organize one of their worldwide famous events right in front of the Palace of the Parliament. For those of you who have never heard about this location before, you might like to know that it's the heaviest building in the world and the second largest administrative one.

This venue has been home to multiple motorsport events in the past, focused around drifting or GT Racing. Before 2010, the FIA organized endurance races around the building, a unique location for the series.

In 2011, downtown Bucharest hosted the Drift Grand Prix which drew in competitors from multiple countries and continents. So, with a spectacular backdrop for the event, the team at Red Bull Racing was going to provide an equally impressive line-up of athletes and machines.

Red Bull Racing F1 Car, Drift Cars and Stunt Bike Burned Rubber in Downtown Bucharest
Photo: Andrei Minzu
Stunt riding has been getting more and more traction in recent years, and you'll see at least one world-class rider in every country around Europe. Arunas Gibieža is a 32-year-old rider from Lithuania, who has been experiencing the thrills of being on two wheels ever since he was 10 years old.

It just so happens that his grandfather gifted him a scooter, and it didn't take long for him to experience lifting the front wheel for extended periods. While he had his fair share of road racing experience on the track, stunt riding has always been the go-to experience for him.

And it was only recently that he just set a new world record. While most experienced riders can perform a wheelie for at least a few seconds, Aras took things to a whole new level. On September 3, 2022, he wheelied his Kawasaki stunt bike for just over 1,902 feet (580 meters), without using his hands.

He pulled the stunt off in his home country, in the city of Vilnius: "I had to adjust the idle speed of the engine through the ECU to achieve this performance, and I was doing about 43 mph (70 kph) throughout the whole thing. If someone ever beats this record, I'll probably have another go at it then. Of course, there are a few tricks that are even more difficult to pull off, such as wheelieing while riding backward on the bike."

Red Bull Racing F1 Car, Drift Cars and Stunt Bike Burned Rubber in Downtown Bucharest
Photo: Autoevolution
Moving on to four wheels, the Red Bull DriftBrothers showed up in their 1,000+ hp BMW M4s. While some pro drifters have tried using an anti-lag system on their cars and failed, Elias and Johannes Hountondji found a way to make things work.

There's no LS or JZ engine under the hoods of these cars, as they chose to upgrade the factory engine to push those insane performance figures. Both of them have been drifting for more than a decade now, and few pro drifters in the world have gone sideways on so many tracks as they have. We have been following their evolution since 2011 now, and you'll be impressed by their journey in drifting so far.

Their tandem runs in downtown Bucharest had everyone holding their breath, even though the course layout didn't allow them to reveal their true potential. But the moment everyone was waiting for came just moments after the two drifters returned to the paddock area.

Once the Red Bull Racing RB7 fired up its V8 engine, tens of thousands of smartphones came out of people's pockets and started recording every single second of it. Back in 2011, Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber were driving for Red Bull Racing. They managed to score 12 wins, 18 poles, 27 podiums, and 650 points using this chassis and pretty much dominated the racing season.

Red Bull Racing F1 Car, Drift Cars and Stunt Bike Burned Rubber in Downtown Bucharest
Photo: Andrei Minzu
41-year-old Patrick Friesacher from Austria was the man behind the wheel, and he released the 750-hp monster down the six-lane road to the delight of everyone in the audience. With an estimated crowd of about 50,000 people, hearing a Formula 1 engine hitting the rev limit could be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And with all the buildings around the location, the sound echoed even more aggressively for minutes in a row.

Most people would have loved to get an extended experience of the whole thing, but the program was relatively short. With so many people gathered to see the show, it all felt a bit too crowded, and seeing the action felt almost impossible at times. But, at the end of the day, it might just inspire some young kids in the audience to start a career in motorsports and that's crucial for the future of the industry. We'll be following up with interviews for each of the athletes that took part in the event and with more photos as well.



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About the author: Dragos Chitulescu
Dragos Chitulescu profile photo

The things Dragos enjoys the most in life are, in no particular order: cars, motorcycles, diecast cars, and drifting. He's seen (and driven) many vehicles since he started his writing career back in 2009, but his garage currently houses a 1991 Mazda RX-7 FC3S Turbo II and a 1999 Suzuki SV650-S.
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