Why Did Red Bull Build a 185+ MPH Drone?

When he’s racing, pro race car driver Max Verstappen’s Formula One car can get up to 185 mph—and sometimes much, much faster.

Which poses a problem if you’re trying to get good drone shots, or really any kind of video footage, of the car while it’s racing. The moment it appears, it’s already gone.

To solve this problem, Red Bull built a drone that can keep up with Verstappen’s car.

The drone was tested for the first time last month, on February 13, at Silverstone’s Grand Prix Circuit.

And in that test, it managed to achieve something that was previously thought impossible: Following Red Bull Racing’s brand-new F1 car, the RB20S, for an entire lap at full speed.

The driver for that test was Max Verstappen, the Formula One World Driver’s Champion for 2021, and winner of the Formula One championships in both 2022 and 2023.

According to Red Bull, the successful flight was a first “not only in drone tech, but in F1 history.”

The world’s first uninterrupted FPV one shot was captured by a manually piloted custom built drone, designed specifically for the challenge of keeping up with the car at speeds of over 300kph.

– Red Bull Racing

How Red Bull Got Drone Footage of a Race Car at Full Speed

It’s worth noting that the “first ever” accomplishment Red Bull is touting here isn’t just about building a super-fast drone. It’s also about finding a pilot who can actually fly that drone and get good footage.

Enter Shaggy, the drone pilot Red Bull teamed up with for this project.

Shaggy’s real name is Ralph Hogenbirk, and he’s one of the main drone pilots in the Dutch Drone Gods—FPV pilots who are best known for shooting high-speed extreme sports footage like this:

Shaggy is also a drone racing pilot himself, and has competed in the Drone Racing League. (On a related note, both Verstappen and Shaggy are Dutch—Verstappen is the first Dutch driver ever to become a World Driver’s Champion.)

For this Red Bull Racing project, Shaggy not only flew the drone. He also built it.

In building the drone, he knew it had to be able to:

• Go fast enough to keep up with an F1 car (over 185 mph)
• Match an F1 racing car in both acceleration and deceleration around turns
• Use a battery that could fly flat out at about 3.6 miles (5.8 km)
• Handle sustained power without catching on fire

To meet these requirements, Shaggy built a drone with a custom chassis that uses cutting-edge motors and stabilizers.

When finished, the drone weighed just 2.2 pounds (985 grams), carried two 4K cameras, and could go from 60 to 180 mph in less than 2 seconds.

Credit: Joerg Mitter / Red Bull

But building the super-fast drone and flying it were two different challenges.

According to Shaggy, the custom drone was hard to control. It required extreme focus to pull off flying FPV while manually checking and adjusting the drone’s camera angle to make sure he was getting good footage.

In terms of adrenaline, I have to stay reasonably calm, but that’s hard to do. I was quite nervous. A lot of pilots do have shaky fingers, but my mind feels like it’s in the drone. I’m fully connected, it’s like an out-of-body experience.

Shaggy, AKA Ralph Hogenbirk, FPV Drone Racing Pilot

What’s Next for Red Bull Racing and the Dutch Drone Gods?

Now that Red Bull Racing has proved it can get these kinds of high-speed shots, and has a drone that can do it, we may start seeing more of them.

In a recent interview with Red Bull, Shaggy shared that he’s already thinking of ways to improve the drone, including getting a high-quality live feed from it for live streaming, as well as doing more testing to prove the drone is safe and reliable.

One day, according to his vision, these super-fast drones could be commonplace at races, providing live footage as the cars speed around the track. There could even be multiple super-fast drones (though the logistics to pull that off do seem pretty daunting).

This could change how people watch Formula 1.

– Max Verstappen, Formula One World Driver’s Champion of 2021