Red Bull Motorsports
F1
F1 Car vs. Rugby Team: Who Comes Out on Top?
Red Bull Racing faces Bath Rugby in a world-first showdown. Who will win this head-to-head match-up?
Daniel burns rubber as the players burn calories
© Olaf Pignataro/Red Bull Content Pool
Pitting a Formula One car versus eight rugby players doesn’t sound like a very fair fight, does it? A 750 bhp, state-of-the-art speed machine that can hit well over 200mph versus eight humanoids made of nothing more advanced than skin, muscle and bone — no contest, right?
Yet that’s exactly the gauntlet that the Red Bull Racing F1 team threw down for Bath Rugby club when they challenged them to take on their 2012 Formula One World Championship-winning RB8 car in a straight scrum down. (For those unfamiliar with the scrum, it's that grunting mash-up that occurs when players from opposing teams pack together in order to fight for the ball when play needs to be restarted.)
Watch the video below to see what happened:
1 min
F1 car vs a rugby scrum
Watch Daniel Ricciardo and Red Bull Racing take on Bath Football Rugby in a scrum down.
Using a specially-altered scrum machine to achieve this world first, the RB8 would push against Bath Rugby’s first-string pack, with battle set to commence in the grounds of the team’s beautiful Farleigh House training facility.
Not wanting to pull any punches, Red Bull Racing even brought down three-time F1 race winner Daniel Ricciardo to handle the driving.
Scroll down for more images and Ricciardo's thoughts on the day.
The players were surprised to see the RB8
© Olaf Pignataro/Red Bull Content Pool
Daniel Ricciardo gets ready to hit the loud pedal
© Olaf Pignataro/Red Bull Content Pool
Going to the chapel...
© Olaf Pignataro/Red Bull Content Pool
Daniel had time to chuck a rugby ball around
© Olaf Pignataro/Red Bull Content Pool
Daniel, what did you make of the F1 Scrum idea when you first heard about it?
I didn’t quite understand what they wanted to do at first. I was like, "How do you do that?" But obviously now that I’ve seen it, I think it’s really cool. I like things that are different and that no one’s ever done before. Then the backdrop and everything at Bath — to be in the car with all these big, scary guys trying to push me back, it’s quite cool.
You got to hang out with the Bath Rugby players. What do you make of their fitness compared to yours?
That for me is the great thing about sport. People say, "Oh, what are you going to learn from them, their bodies and their training are completely different." But you can always learn something, and I think any professional athlete has something to offer, whether it’s a training method or a nutritional thing or a psychology thing or whatever. So I was interested to see a little bit about what they do, what their workouts are like. The kind of size that they have doesn’t happen overnight!
