This is blatantly a viral ad put together by Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, but it’s pretty fun. The end is cool, and we’re quite intrigued to find out how they actually did it. If you know the actors involved or any of the back story to this, then please comment below:


rc car: just used the normal rc transitter or modified the receiver to use blue tooth.
real car: Computer grafic or lewis has magical power or lewis doesn’t know to drive and the real car in the whole season was secretly drived by satellite by an 8 year old kid’s playstation from canada.
If the FIA is going crazy again, they could recommend this as a safty feature when the driver is actually not in the car…
… ohh, hold on… BREAKING NEWS!…
The F1 Teams forced the FIA to establish this in the 2010 rules. Spokemen said, that this could help to safe some weight (and fuel) due to the heavy KERS system.
Ecclestones comment was: “… as long as we keep the viewers happy…”
Oh Dear.
greetings from germany
They couldn’t have used a Storm, the sensors are just rubbish on it.
Well remember lewis had his first foray into motorsport with remote controlled cars and I dont see how hard it would be to make a remote contrlled f1 car (maybe not with the original engine for simplicities sake, etc,etc) and then dub the sound over the top.
That little power slide in the puddle was more exciting than the whole Valencia GP last year.
Hahaha, I would like to do that with a car that’s worth a few hundred million!!
That powerslide in the puddle was epic.
the powerslide was epic??!! the whole thing was epic!
Without wishing to piss on anyone’s bonfire, how do you know that the original RC controller wasn’t used in the beginning? All that’s on the iPhone is a picture of some arrows.
hey everyone i found the new williams livery doesnt look half bad
http://www.formula1.com/g allery/other/2009/383.htm l
coolest vid EVER!!!
sdsdsdsdsdsddsdssdd
”Lewis is now in his element” Ha ha so funy vid. Loved it!
That was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen, viral ad or not.
Sweeeeetness!
Dear Santa,
I know it’s still a while until Christmas but…
This video is awsome.its really cool and lewis seems like a pretty good driver if he can just stand there and do that. i want a blackberry storm now.
AMAZING is the word I would want to put it..but it is way bigger than that..holy moos and the cows that say that..This is Fireworks!!
I have a feeling mercedes benz will be offering that system for there cars where u dont have to walk to the car the car comes to you
Brilliant – and soooo funny too!
Heikki is only a little fella you know, it wouldn’t be too much trouble for him to scrunch down a bit out of sight. Either that or Richard Hammond has been spoiled with another go in an F1 car…
This is a wild guess but dressing a real driver in a suit and helmet coloured in such a way that they could easily be matted out in post production would be the way I’d do it. I don’t believe for a minute that they’d risk a real F1 car by driving it remotely.
Anyone notice the position of the car when Lewis flicks the control right?
It looked cool. But I’m skeptical they could use Bluetooth from that distance.
I highly doubt the actual car used bluetooth…
remote real cars are nothing new, top gear had a few on I believe at one point
but impressive none the less, I’m a little skeptical that it was a phone driving the f1 car but yeah
The magic of TV. Lewis holds the Storm and waves it around. “Pretend your driving a car”. The car is driven in another take. They are then brought together in an editing room. The Ad probably cost around 100,000 to make. Quite standard. The car would not be RC because of the cost to build one. An RC car is not the easiest thing to control, let alone one with 700bhp.
Watch how Lewis moves the phone. He would have smashed the pit wall when it accelerated after he got it out of the garage.
Cool vid but hardly. Bluetooth range is only 15ft, and Lewis was driving it away at 150ft.
Good bit of fun nonetheless
rc car= the little one
real car= the big one
just to be clear.
wow! Yes, the puddle bit was cool, but what about the drivin the car with the phone? I want one!
It is intriguing to see that more that 0 people actually believe the phone had any controlling function against the cars.
I guess this will to believe in anything is why people in Nigeria can get rich by sending a bunch of emails…
i dont know if anybody remembers the old williams bmw ad when juan pablo montoya and ralph schumacher drove their cars around a track using proper remote controls. Shows that it isnt completely impossible to drive it RC.
Call me naive, but i think the real McLaren was actually driven by RC but not by Lewis and the phone.
All it would take is a few engineers with some spare time, a “simulator”-type remote control system, and a camera on the car so the remote driver could see where they were going.
So basically imagine a simulator like they use for training, but with an RC setup operating the controls in the car via servos and such. It could be done without too much difficulty.
At first I was thinking they did it with a driver wearing a “green screen” suit and helmet, but that exit shot from the garage looks like it would be very hard to pull off in post.
Who knows? I’m probably wrong, but I want to believe it was real!
I used to race in the same RC series as Hamilton, back in the day, and while he was a prodigy, I think its a little different driving an F1 car with a phone!! With all the electronics on the car I guess its possible, but I certainly wouldnt want to drive a multi-million pound car with a remote, and im pretty handy!! (a proper rc car costs about £350…
)
its not a car of a dream you idot
i know a car that you will all like the new aston martin yeah if you dont like it then drive your mums old car
i say hammond always wins but i agree that clarkson is a bit over the edge some times and he is taller than both thats why he is a dick
cant belive your skyline got took off you
hahaha cool
how the race going on port dead line
i they used an i phone , just think! firt gp from the bar!
Possible, just about everything on an F1 car is fly-by-wire and/or hydraulic. Not from the Blackberry though, unfortunately
Very good video, especially the slide!
Quite fitting they binned it into the wall aswell, quite like Lewis recently hehe
ahhaa thats amazing
that is how they should desing race tracks – rc cars + boring office, then scale it up. add a puddle here, a spike strip there and you’re good to go
It’s worth suspending disbelief just to enjoy that. It was great fun!
Would love to know the details though. The first bit’s definitely feasible (we’ve used Bluetooth to control all sorts of things in the lab at uni) and as for the second bit… well, that’s the magic of t’Internet
That was so cool!!
I wonder how they actually did the 1/1 scale R/C car? I mean, without all the big machine stuff they needed on TG.
Muerte, another source of inspiration could be video games. I can think of 2 or 3 Gran Turismo tracks I want to see built, for instance.
THAT WAS ACE
Lewis hamilton is the crapest f1 driver ever and so is his maclaren. anyway this video is CRAP! BECAUSE LEWIS’S CAR IS IN IT!!!!!!!!!! Ferrari and felipe massa are the best!!!!!!!!!!!!
“Superbluetooth” hacking anybody ?
the real car might be a RC, whoever said it has real engine, could be small electric just to keep it moving-it doesn’t go very fast in clip and then overdubbed with some noise of F1, which sounds to me like Ferrari!
Wouldn’t you get fired for using the office on a weekend and turning it into a test track?
AXF1 is most probablly a member of the Ferrari team and is just annoyed cos YOUR ARSE GOT KICKED
if they spent more time devolping the car rather than doing this then maybz theyd b in a better postion for this weekend
genuine video i mean i dunno if it’s possible with the real car but it was cool. anyways go kimi and ferrari
Just used radio recaever
Thanks a lot for this superb article. But I had trouble navigating past your website as I kept getting 502 bad gateway error. Just thought to let you know.
,[...] sundayafternoonclub.blogs .topgear.com is one another nice source of information on this subject,[...]