F1 Drivers vs Honda Acty Kei Trucks: Red Bull's Wildest Challenge Yet

Max Verstappen can brake at 6G, process telemetry data at 300 km/h, and thread a 740 horsepower car through a gap narrower than most parking spaces. Put him in a Honda Acty kei truck at 40 km/h, and suddenly he is just a tall Dutch guy struggling with a column shifter.

Red Bull's "(Un)Serious Race Series" on YouTube has become one of the best things the energy drink empire produces outside of F1 coverage. The concept is simple: take the four drivers from Red Bull Racing and Scuderia AlphaTauri, remove every advantage that makes them dominant, and see what happens. For Round 3, filmed at Tokyo's Ariake Stadium ahead of the 2023 Japanese Grand Prix, the weapon of choice was a fleet of Honda Acty kei trucks decked out in team livery. The result was nine minutes of pure comedy and an accidental masterclass in why kei trucks demand a totally different skill set than anything else on four wheels.

The Kei Truck Advantage Nobody Expected

Yuki Tsunoda walked into the competition with a secret weapon that no amount of sim time could replicate: he had actually driven kei trucks before. "I drove kei trucks a couple of times when I was 18," he told the crew. "My grandfather had one for gardening. The truck was the perfect size, perfectly fitting and it was fun to drive, very controllable and sharp." According to Carscoops' coverage, that family experience gave AlphaTauri an immediate edge.

This tracks with what any kei truck owner already knows. A Suzuki Carry or Acty does not reward the same instincts as a fast car. There is no horsepower to bail you out of a bad line. The steering is direct but the feedback is completely different from anything with power assist. And the driving position, sitting almost directly over the front axle with the engine behind or beneath you, takes genuine adaptation. Tsunoda had that adaptation baked in from years of watching his grandfather work. Verstappen, the greatest F1 driver of his generation, had to learn it in real time.

Four Challenges, Zero Relevance to F1

The competition broke down into four events that tested precision, spatial awareness, and patience, three things F1 drivers almost never need at the speeds they work.

The first challenge was a reverse slalom capped with parallel parking. Tsunoda crushed it for AlphaTauri, threading the Acty backward through cones with the confidence of someone who had done this before. Perez, driving for Red Bull, struggled with the parking portion. As Motor1 reported, the tight dimensions of the kei truck made the parallel park harder than it looked. The Acty is just 3,395mm long and 1,475mm wide, and at low speed, the lack of a rearview camera makes backing up an exercise in neck craning and spatial estimation.

The second challenge was an obstacle course driven blindfolded while a teammate shouted directions. Verstappen and Lawson wore the blindfolds. Perez and Tsunoda navigated. The catch: each truck had boxes stacked in the bed, and every dropped box earned time penalties. Red Bull won this one because Perez turned out to be a better navigator than Tsunoda. Lawson stepped on the gas too hard crossing the finish line and sent boxes flying everywhere. In a sport where a tenth of a second separates pole position from P3, the inability to modulate a 660cc throttle is deeply funny.

AlphaTauri took the third challenge, an oversized bowling event, before Red Bull won the final sprint race. During that last event, Lawson slid across the Acty's bench seat, knocked the shifter into neutral, and cost his team the lead. The column mounted shifter on the Acty, designed for Japanese postal workers and farmers, does not have the tactile precision of an F1 paddle. It just does not. As autoevolution put it, F1 pilots are genuinely terrible micro truck drivers, and watching them try is the entire point.

What 24 Million Views Tell Us About Kei Trucks Going Mainstream

As The Drive noted, the video is one of Red Bull's best non-racing productions. It works because the comedy is genuine: world class athletes looking completely out of their element in vehicles that cost less than an F1 steering wheel. But underneath the entertainment, something more significant is happening. Every one of those millions of views represents someone who may have never encountered a kei truck before watching Verstappen wrestle with one.

The kei truck boom in America has been driven partly by social media virality. When a Carry or Acty shows up somewhere unexpected, whether it is a food truck build at a farmers market or an overlanding rig on a trail in Colorado, the reaction is always the same: people pull out their phones and start filming. Red Bull essentially scaled that moment to their entire audience. They took the "wait, what IS that thing?" reaction and broadcast it to millions of motorsport fans who already care about vehicles but might never have considered one that weighs less than their engine.

The Honda Acty: An Unlikely Star

The trucks in the video are late model Honda Acty vans, the HA8/HA9 generation that Honda produced from 1999 until the Acty's discontinuation in 2021. Honda pulled the plug on the Acty because it could not justify the cost of making a 660cc truck meet increasingly strict Japanese safety and emissions regulations. That decision makes these trucks the final generation of Acty ever produced, which is already pushing values upward in the import market. A clean, low mileage HA8 Acty truck that sold for $5,000 three years ago now lists for $8,000 to $12,000 from dealers like Duncan Imports and Japanese Classics.

The Acty's mid engine layout (the E07Z three cylinder sits under the bed, behind the cab) gives it a driving character that is distinct from the front engine Daihatsu Hijet or the rear engine Subaru Sambar. Weight distribution is more centered, which makes it feel planted in a way that surprised even Verstappen. "I haven't quite found the DRS yet," he joked after winning the final challenge. The Acty does not need DRS. It needs good tires, a responsive driver, and a willingness to work within its limits rather than fight them. Our pre-purchase checklist covers exactly what to look for when shopping for one.

F1 Meets Keitora Culture

There is a reason Red Bull chose kei trucks for the Japanese Grand Prix challenge and not go karts or superminis. Kei trucks are deeply embedded in Japanese culture. The kei truck category has existed since 1949, and vehicles like the Acty, Carry, and Hijet are as common in rural Japan as pickup trucks are in rural Texas. For Tsunoda, driving one was not a novelty. It was a connection to his family, his country, and the kind of vehicle he grew up around. That authenticity came through in the video in a way that no amount of production value could manufacture.

The crossover between motorsport culture and keitora culture is growing. At Tokyo Auto Salon 2026, Toyota's Gazoo Racing and Daihatsu staged a kei truck showdown with modified Hijets. In the US, builds like the 550 HP Tesla swapped Suzuki Carry are pushing kei trucks into performance territory that would have seemed absurd five years ago. And at the grassroots level, kei truck meetups are popping up at car shows where they would have been laughed off the lot a decade ago.

If you are watching this video and thinking about getting your own Acty or Carry, start with our guide on what a kei truck actually is, check your state's legality rules, and browse the dealer directory to find an importer near you. And if you happen to be a Formula 1 world champion, maybe practice your parallel parking first.