- This is a country
very much with its own identity.
- The people are lovely and friendly here.
I think everyone's really excited about the run.
Each show run is absolutely unique,
I mean the Burj al Arab is one thing.
To take a car and put it on a helipad
and do some donuts is fantastic.
But we've driven up roads in the Himalayas,
and we've driven across the deserts in Jordan,
so everything is totally different.
They've all been wonderful experiences.
- They've all been journeys of discovery for me personally,
and I also feel proud that we're
taking Formula One to countries and to new fans.
Although they are not a mature audience for Formula One,
there's clearly a great deal of excitement about
this first opportunity to see the Red Bull Racing car.
Doing showruns themselves, it's absolutely fantastic
I mean, what a job.
You get to show off around the world,
doing donuts and having fun.
So, no, it's great, I love it.
The main function of the support team is
to support the race team, that's what we do.
We produce the next series of mechanics for the race team.
So this is like a training ground for them.
Our responsibilities within Aston Martin Red Bull Racing
are both testing and development of the cars,
as well as supporting the race team at various race events.
Because we have various gaps during the season
when we're not required,
that gives us a chance to go out and show off a bit
with the show cars.
So yeah, it's a pretty varied job,
but it's exciting and changes quite a lot.
- It's a smaller group of people here,
when we have a running show car
versus a proper Grand Prix team,
but it's all the same skillsets that are necessary.
So we have our engine engineers here,
we have data engineers, we have the mechanics of course.
And the challenge is that
we're always dealing with temporary facilities.
- We always take two cars to an event.
One spare car and one actual running car.
This is because we don't run a spares package,
so if anything goes wrong,
we've always got a substitute car to go to.
So we pack the cars in Milton Keynes in three boxes.
We have to break the cars down a little bit
to get them into these boxes
because they're a special size to fit in any aircraft.
It's very tight getting them out.
We're playing with about five millimeters of distance
between the front and rear of the car,
so precision forklift driving is all that matters.
Our next step is to unpack the cars,
and assemble all the components.
Down a tad!
Hold on, Jonno, in a bit, tilt back.
That's it!
Generally takes around about nine hours
to unpack the car and build it complete, ready for fire-up.
- Well when you look at the roads here,
they have a very special driving technique.
There's a lot of motorbikes in Ho Chi Minh.
- Somehow it seems to work though, doesn't it?
They all just filter in and out of each other,
no one hits each other.
- There's no question they do good spacial awareness,
so if this event serves to stimulate
an interest in motor racing, then maybe in the future
we'll have a Vietnamese Formula One driver.
- Six months ago, I first came to Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam
to locate or identify the location where we're stood now.
And so with security, are you gonna stop,
there won't be viewing from the steps,
you'll keep people moving up and down, correct?
That's actually gonna be quite tight, actually here,
because of the truss structure,
we're gonna be coming out left hand down,
so he's actually gonna be going out left first.
When DC stands on top of the car,
and gives it the hands up, that's your cue
to come in with the hero car, okay?
- Okay, yeah.
- This is looking really nice.
I'm generally excited about how event day is gonna be.
When you see the plans,
when you see the presentations and the artist impression,
you think, okay yeah, it would look great.
But then when you see it in real life,
coming to fruition like this--
- It's gonna be really exciting.
- Yeah.
It's taken six months of work to get this far,
and a lot's changed.
We've now got a racetrack
just outside of the heart of Ho Chi Minh.
- This is Martin, our electronics engineer.
As you can see, he's just plugged into the car
via the umbilical here, we call this cord an umbilical,
which links the laptop to the ECU on the car.
- Car travels mostly electrically connected,
aside from the battery.
So when we arrive here,
it's really connect the batteries up,
and make sure we've got power to charge everything,
and then turn it on and make sure it's still alright
from the last time we used it.
Looking good.
- Five past nine in the evening,
the cars just arrived from the team garage.
Rehearsal, night before the large event.
Martin Garrix will be DJ-ing.
He'll be 50 foot above us,
but what we're interested in now is making sure that
the structure and the car is safe for the live show.
This platform is actually on rollers,
which it will move towards the main stage.
As you can see, in front of us we've got the lift.
The car on its dolly will go onto these train tracks.
The lift you're stood on will go up,
and then the F1 car will be propelled down the main stage.
If you look directly up above us,
they haven't just forgotten the LED screens up there,
that's actually the DJ booth where Martin Garrix will be.
It's amazing to have the world's number one DJ,
DJ-ing with our car right out in front of it,
it's pretty special, this is huge.
- The whole platform just slides.
- Slides, yeah.
The guys are doing great, they're doing a really good job,
but this is why we have rehearsals.
I think this will,
I think this will look epic.
- Yeah.
- This will, well done.
- Yeah.
- This is gonna look unbelievable,
especially when the fireworks are going off.
I can't wait to see it.
Right here we are in our marquee.
It's a bit big for a marquee, set marquee tent.
We don't usually have this much room.
Usually we're squashing into a tight space
in a little plastic tent,
but this is absolutely phenomenal, isn't it?
Still hot in here, though.
- We're four hours out from the event start.
The driver David Coulthard has just arrived.
So we're gonna get him into schedule,
give him, get him briefed.
Alright buddy, all good, yeah we're on.
- They've certainly put a great setup here, haven't they?
- I suppose the main challenges for us as a team
is the safety aspects of the whole event.
We have two rows of barriers to make sure that
spectators can't get anywhere near the track.
The guys are always ready,
we're ready to stop the event at a moment's notice.
There are fire marshals every 50 meters,
so they're all ready to put the car out,
if David gets into any trouble.
And that's it.
- Okay.
- No more than that.
And go around the other side, same again.
- Is that normal to have some--
- Sometimes when it's running it will smoke
because the exhaust is hot, bodywork gets hot,
and you may get the small amount of smoke.
All good?
- No problem.
- Thanks, mate.
- Yeah, thank you.
- The main thing we're looking on the track recce
is that it's wide enough for us to do what we do best.
And that's donuts, throw the car around,
make it exciting for the spectators.
- What I'm I'm looking for is track safety, show flow,
making sure the driver is in
the right place and the right time.
- Yeah, and the cars themselves
they are prepared to do show runs in several ways.
Mainly, the cars are picked up, their suspensions raised.
The car is raised from the ground
to give it more ground clearance
because these roads are nowhere near as smooth as a track.
They have their own fans onboard.
Because they're doing a lot of slow speed stuff,
we need to draw the air through the radiators
and over the exhaust,
otherwise the bodywork will catch fire.
- So now the storm's here.
It's getting quite heavy,
so the event production team and the event director
are just basically looking into how the,
the storm is being tracked where we are,
and also keeping an eye on
other weather conditions like lightning.
Basically, once you're in your overalls,
where the event starts at 5:00,
we're gonna be rolling out 5:21
at the either end on the north and south end,
we're gonna be putting braking boards out.
50, 100, 150.
So all the fire marshals, just so you're aware, have CO2.
At around 4:00, Martin Garrix is coming here,
and it would be great if you could
introduce him to the F1 car.
When you jump in there, when the guys tell you it's okay,
you just need to push a little between on the throttle,
because it's a very short travel.
Just lean your arms on either side,
and just slot your legs forward.
- Like this?
- That's it, yeah, that's good.
Good idea with the earplugs, yeah.
- Yeah, I need my ears.
- Yeah.
- Is DC about?
- One of the most important jobs on the run day is
to do a radio check and make sure
we can hear him, he can hear us.
Can you hear me talking, one, two, three?
- Okay.
- Can you hear me on this one?
- Okay.
- Okay, making a go three minutes.
Every country we go to,
we get a fantastic turnout, and a great reception
to seeing a Grand Prix car up close and personal.
Very excited to, for the very first time,
bring a Formula One car to this country.
I've done so many of these running show car events
over the years now,
and they never fail to lose the excitement,
because you get so close to the public.
Okay David, do you wanna try a donut
for your adoring fans in front of us at the garage?
Okay, we have one minute to kill, one minute.
Okay mate, cool the car bring it back.
- Yeah, Roger that.
The humidity when I was finishing,
made me feel like I'd just done
an hour and 45 minutes around Monte Carlo,
or you know, two hours around Singapore.
- Well done, David, you've got 20 minutes mate.
Okay last go, mate, same again,
and you're gonna end up here doing donuts.
One small up and down, then the grand finale, mate.
He'll be putting on a show,
wowing the crowds with a mixture of
high speed passes, donuts, and heavy braking.
However, whilst in doing so,
DC's gonna have to have one eye on the engine temperature.
- We made history today, running the first time
Aston Martin Red Bull Racing car in Vietnam.
For that matter, to run a Formula One car
for the first time in Vietnam is phenomenal.
Huge team effort, you know,
it's taken six months of planning.
The weather tried its damnedest to
put a dampener on the event,
but no, the crowds came out, the fans loved it.
DC absolutely nailed it, as he always does.
So we're 50% through the event,
the car side, the running of the car is finished.
And we're loading up the cars,
and we're taking them to the Heineken mega event site.
- We're now gonna head over to the main stage,
where Martin Garrix is gonna be playing for 40,000 people,
and well he's a superstar DJ, and I'm a fan.
The F1 car, the Aston Martin Red Bull Racing RB7,
is gonna be center stage, pride of place,
in front of all those fans.
Honestly, it's been really fantastic,
to be here, to bring Formula One to Vietnam,
to see the passion and energy
that all of you beautiful people have.
So thank you very much, on behalf of Red Bull and myself.
I hope you're gonna have an amazing night tonight.
I'm gonna be right in amongst it with you.
So again, Vietnam.