RB8 Catches Fire During Red Bull Show Run in Taiwan

Yuki Tsunoda was performing a routine Show Run for Red Bull Racing in Taichung, Taiwan, when the engine of Sebastian Vettel's 2012 Championship-winning RB8 caught on fire, forcing the current Racing Bulls driver to leap from the vehicle.

During the current F1 monthlong break, Red Bull is taking the opportunity to parade their current drivers around. This show run comes just days after Tsunoda's VCARB teammate Daniel Ricciardo was let go in the middle of the season and replaced with Liam Lawson.

Red Bull puts on Show Runs worldwide as a free event to garnish new interest in F1. This weekend, Tsunoda was burning rubber on Taichung Municipal Road when he brought the RB8 to a halt and jumped out. Safety Marshalls were quickly on the scene to extinguish the fire as Tsunoda waived to fans.

The 2012 RB8 is powered by an RS27; the Renault engine was used by four of the ten F1 teams on the grid in 2012: Red Bull, Lotus, Caterham, and Williams. Renault is currently in the process of transitioning away from making engines for F1 and focusing solely on customer-facing engines for Alpine's further expansion into road cars.

The RS27 is a V8 engine, which hasn't been raced in F1 since the hybrid switch in 2014 ushered in V6s. This was Tsunoda, who joined the grid in 2021, first time driving an F1 car with a V8 engine.

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