Midtown Madness

After a gap of eight years, Red Bull Racing and David Coulthard returned to India for another Showrun. This time it was held at Bandstand, Mumbai. Anagh Bhaskar brings you all the details from the Red Bull Showrun 2023

- Anagh Bhaskar

On a sunny Sunday last month, Mumbaikars woke up to a sound they had not heard since 2009 – the roar of a Formula 1 car. This was the return of the Red Bull Showrun, held at Bandra this year, and while the Indian Grand Prix has been off the F1 calendar for a decade now, an F1 car’s ability to pull a crowd is immense, case in point being the 25,000 spectators that flocked the Bandstand to catch a glimpse of the RB7 as it thundered down on the tarmac and left everyone’s eardrums shattered.

Red Bull has hosted two Showruns in India before this one, with the first one held in Mumbai, on the Bandra-Worli Sea Link and the second in Hyderabad. All three of these have been with former British Formula 1 driver David Coulthard behind the wheel.

 

Coulthard who is a regular fixture on Formula 1’s broadcast as a commentator and presenter, has been a part of the Red Bull family for a long time. He joined the team in 2005, the first year of its founding as a full team after the energy drink brand purchased the Jaguar Racing team from Ford. He also scored the team’s first podium at the Monaco Grand Prix in 2006.

The car you see on these pages is the RB7, which won the World Drivers’ Championship and the World Constructors’ Championship in 2011. Driven by Sebastian Vettel, the car won 11 races with the German and one driven by his teammate, Mark Webber. To put stats into perspective, the RB7 won 12 out of 19 races, had 27 podiums, 18 pole positions in Qualifying (15 by Vettel, a record which stands even today) and 10 fastest laps. The 2011 Formula 1 season was completely domination by the Red Bull RB7 and Vettel.