Sebastian Vettel drives his Toro Rosso on public streets to pick up award
Sebastian Vettel en route to receive the Lorenzo Bandini Trophy – Click above for a high-res image galleryIt's not every day that we get to see an F1 car out on city streets, but then again, we don't live in Italy. That's the racing-crazed country that recently allowed Sebastian Vettel to drive a grand prix racer across 12 kilometers of public roads to receive the Lorenzo Bandini Trophy.
The award is presented annually in the Italian village of Brisighella, where Lorenzo Bandini lived until his tragic death at the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix. Every year since, the Bandini family presents the trophy to a F1 driver, and it's become a bit of a tradition that the recipient drive his F1 car to pick it up in person. So with police escorts (note the Polizia-spec Lamborghini Gallardo in the background of the pictures in the gallery below), Vettel drove the dozen clicks from the home base of the Scuderia Toro Rosso – with whom he won the Italian Grand Prix last season – in an STR F1 car to Brisighella, where he joined the ranks of such recent recipients as Felipe Massa, Mark Webber, Kimi Raikkonen, Jacques Villeneuve and Robert Kubica in accepting the citation.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
danotoriousb 10:12AM (6/05/2009)
Those are some lucky cops who get to drive that Lambo...
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Cole 1:51PM (6/05/2009)
What about the poor sucker who is driving the SEBRING convertible? WTF! Is there no proper Italian car for the job?
Alex 10:21AM (6/05/2009)
As much fun as it would be to drive an F1 car, its gotta be a bit of a pain in the ass to drive it on city streets. The car isn't exactly designed for stop and go or low speed driving.
Regardless, it would be an awesome sight!
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sparrk 12:46PM (6/05/2009)
it's not a problem for them to change the car's setup for city driving.
Jared 3:06PM (6/05/2009)
Look how much they cranked up the ride height. The top control arm (?) on the front wheels is angled down from it's attachment point on the body. Normally it looks perfectly flat when I see race pictures.
paul 10:26AM (6/05/2009)
I would love to see some video of this little trip.
Paul S
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Franz 11:06AM (6/05/2009)
Must've been a blast. Last year I was home in Jamaica when Red Bull brought out the RB2 with Sébastien Buemi. It was incredible. It was mostly high speed flybys, donuts & burnouts at the main event in the afternoon, but early in the morning they closed off a section of highway and he got to do some full bore runs. I've always watched F1 and I've been to GPs before, but nothing quite compares to seeing these things run on the street. I also got to sit in the pits on a stack of Bridgestones, touch bodywork & tools, and watch as RBR techs tore into a wrecked gearbox, fixing it in a few minutes. Took a ton of photos but not much video of the car at speed: from where I was standing, most times all I got on video was a 180mph blur.
petey 10:31AM (6/05/2009)
Looks like the worst. car. ever. makes an ok camera car
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Salman Anjum 10:44AM (6/05/2009)
woah the chrysler sebring is in front of a lambo gallardo and behind an f1 car, maybe this bankruptcy isn't all bad.
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Slade 10:51AM (6/05/2009)
here's a short video of him driving on the road.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t78z-VIBpQQ
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larry raines 11:12AM (6/05/2009)
I bet he had a long train of cars behind him - like Monaco
spoiler!
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Kyle 1:10PM (6/05/2009)
Hah the ambulance just in case those full wet tyres failed him.
Timothy Auhll 11:23AM (6/05/2009)
Had to be tough to raise the ride height, open up the cooling to the radiators and all the other hundreds of little things that we might not know anything about.
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Tang 12:01PM (6/05/2009)
Someone in Europe actually bought a Sebring convertible?
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sparrk 2:56PM (6/05/2009)
it's an exotic here :)
Jake 12:45PM (6/05/2009)
I bet he didn't pass anyone on the road there.
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Piso 1:26PM (6/05/2009)
I live in Faenza the home town of toro rosso. I was there watching him pass by and it was amazing! What a sound! Last year Kubica did the same thing with is BMW. Just awesome!
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Ian 2:42PM (6/05/2009)
The next time I get a prestigious award I too will follow Vettel's fashion lead and respectfully wear jeans and a tee shirt....
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