It is documented around that internet that Red Bull’s mercurial world champion gives his racing cars tongue-in-cheek names in the tradition of pilots naming their fighters and bombers (and supersonic man-rockets). Here’s the cockpit of Kinky Kylie, his 2011 car.
He took his first win at Monza with Julie (a Toro Rosso STR3), challenged Jenson Button for the 2009 title with Kate and Kate’s Dirty Sister (a pair of Red Bull RB5’s), and won the 2010 title with the flawed Luscious Liz and the excellent Randy Mandy (Red Bull RB6’s).
His 2011 chassis, a Red Bull RB7, is named Kinky Kylie after the Australian pop singer Kylie Minogue, and it’s served Vettel like no other car before: five wins out of six races. An excellent and well-informed choice, if one looks at Minogue’s videography, as the music video for her 2001 hit “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” begins with Minogue driving a yellow De Tomaso Mangusta into a futuristic city.
This rare shot of the Kinky Kylie label above the Red Bull’s shift lights is a still from the race broadcast of the Monaco Grand Prix, taken while the race was red-flagged after a mass accident on lap 69.