Aston Martin's made a V8 Vantage soapbox

Another weekend, another race podium for Aston Martin. After scoring a class victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and it’s now claimed second overall in the 24 Seconds of Le Ally Pally.

Confused? That’s Aston’s name for this year’s Red Bull Soapbox Race, which has just taken place at Alexandra Palace in London. In a move no doubt connected to Aston and Red Bull’s tie-up, the British sports car maker had its own official entry at an event more traditionally filled with keen amateur teams.

And just look how gloriously crafted its Vantage V8 GTE soapbox racer is. It looks exceedingly professional in its execution, while still resembling the tiny bundle of fun a soapbox ought to.

Such meticulous manufacturing probably has Aston hoping for overall victory, and it just missed out to another motorsport-themed entry, Team Brooklands Special. Enough for the team to in a Daniel Ricciardo-style podium shoey...

While Aston works drivers Darren Turner and Jonny Adam helped with the ‘performance’ aspect of the scoring – waving champagne bottles around in a pit-stop themed dance – they passed driving duties (well, careering down the hill duties) to engineer Alex Summers. See the run from his point of view via the video above.

But he seemed pretty happy to be given the most precarious job in the team. “As the driver, the best thing about not being in the performance at the start was that I was able to see everything happen around me,” Summers said. “It was a truly chaotic pit stop but the crowd really seemed to enjoy it and being joined by Darren Turner and Jonny Adam made it even more special.

“Once I’d seen that we’d received a good score from the judges for our performance, my nerves at the thought of driving in front of over 20,00 people completely disappeared and I was able to really enjoy the atmosphere.

“I was surprised by how hard the drops were and the swimming pool was particularly tough on me and our little soapbox! I could tell the front of the chassis was hitting the tarmac losing us time and speed on every landing, but it looked and felt pretty spectacular from the cockpit, which is what it’s all about.”

You can see the run in the pictures above. Like the look of the diddy Aston? Reckon there should be a production version so we can all try this at home?