Watch a Lotus F1 Car Go Wild on London Streets

What Lotus did was to ask their 2012 racing machine, the E20 F1 car, to do its stuff on the streets of London over the weekend. Unleashing a racecar onto the streets of a capital isn’t anything new and yet this kind of move is excellent, since it brings racing closer to the people.

Sure’ we’re not talking about Monaco GP here, so don’t expect to see vibrators installed all over the place. Instead, the Lotus E20 was put though its paces on the asphalt of Canary Wharf.

This was a pretty good occasion for us to see how an F1 racer handles stuff such as speed bumps. Our favorite bit of the footage, which comes from spotter Schmee150, is the brief oversteer moment, when the car just seems like it wants to grab a bite out of London’s financial district.

Throughout the clip, you’ll be accompanied by the raging voice of the 18,000-rpm capable Renault V8 engine. This is the kind of scream today’s turbocharged 1.6-liter F1 engines can only dream of.

The stunt even included a pitstop, which showed bystanders just how many things an F1 crew can do in the time a pedestrian takes to buy a bus ticket, for instance.

This was all part of Race Week, a Lotus event that works as an appetizer for the Silverstone Grand Prix, which is scheduled for July4-6. Here’s how the Brits describe it - “a garden party of F1 cars and all things fast, rev up to attend London’s entertainment epicentre during the British Grand Prix. Thursday 3 July at the Royal Artillery Gardens will feature all the glamour of Formula 1 as cars,  stars of F1 celebrate on the six acre site.”