Sebastian Vettel lapping Imola in Ayrton Senna's old McLaren? If there has ever been a better use of an Insta360 X4, we're not aware of one.
It was the 30th anniversary of legendary F1 driver Ayrton Senna's death at the Imola circuit this year, a tragic event that reverberates throughout the sport even now. It was a dreadful weekend. First Rubens Barrichello was injured after crashing extremely heavily on the Friday, then Roland Ratzenburger was tragically killed during qualifying in his Simtek in what was only his third Grand Prix. And then the truly unthinkable, the greatest driver of his generation (with all respect to Alain Prost) died following a restart behind the safety car on lap 7.
I remember watching it all live and it still sends me cold to this day. It emerged not long after that Senna had an Austrian flag stowed in the cockpit of his Williams that he planned to unfurl and fly as a tribute to Ratzenburger after the race.
There have been many tributes to Senna himself this year, but one of the best saw four-time world champion and all round fairly fabulous guy Sebastian Vettel drive round the Imola circuit in Senna's last McLaren from the year before his death, the MP4/8
Filmmaker Rick van Barneveld was attending the F1 Grand Prix in Imola, lending his camera expertise to a friend participating in the Historic F1 car demonstration. When the opportunity arose to film Vettel's tribute run, he jumped at the chance, offering up his Insta360 X4 for the task.
Mounting the camera presented a unique challenge, as the McLaren wasn't equipped with any compatible mounts. So van Barneveld used a Delkin Fat Gecko Triple suction cup. "Having used this suction cup numerous times on other racing cars, including F1 vehicles, I was very confident it was able to withstand the high speeds," he says.
The 8K 360° resolution puts you right on the track alongside Vettel, experiencing every twist, every apex, and that signature track atmosphere. The footage is super stable too, thanks to X4's FlowState Stabilization. That's a 1990''s F1 car... the video would be all over the place without it.
And listen to the audio. They really do not make them like that anymore. "To reduce the wind noise, I placed Wind Mic Muffs on the camera," van Barneveld says. "This worked out really well and reduced the wind noise a lot!"
Turn up the volume. Oh, and if you haven't got a headset don't do what I did first time up and forget to pan round the screen. But I'm an F1 geek and the audio alone was enough for a lap or two :-)
Various rights issues mean that we can't make it autoplay, so you're going to have to do it the old fashioned way and follow the link. It's worth it...