MILTON KEYNES, UK – As the COVID-19 pandemic led to a lockdown across the UK over Christmas 2020, legendary Red Bull Formula One designer Adrian Newey found himself with a lot to offer. lots of time on hand.
Normally, he would spend the Christmas to New Year period skiing or vacationing in South Africa with his wife, but with no plans in place, he let his imagination run wild across the board. his drawing. What he came up with were early sketches for a £5 million (plus tax) hypercar called the RB17.
Hardcore F1 fans will recognize the importance of the name, which fills the gap between last year’s championship-winning RB16B F1 car and this year’s RB18. For those who don’t know, RB stands for Red Bull and the following number has steadily increased over the years corresponding to the number of seasons Red Bull has participated in F1 racing, starting with RB1 in 2005.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, F1 introduced cost-saving measures for the 2021 season that mandated the transfer of chassis designs from one year to the next. As a result, Red Bull decided their 2021 car should be called the RB16B based on its shared chassis with the 2020 RB16, leaving the name RB17 to match.
Around the same time, Newey was spending Christmas day dreaming about how to make a two-seat hypercar as fast as a single-seater F1 car around the track. Take F1 performance to a very, very small ratio to volume, if you will.
However, unlike the Aston Martin Valkyrie, which was designed by Newey and Red Bull Advanced Technologies (RBAT) in conjunction with Aston Martin between 2014 and 2016, this new RB17 supercar will not be legal.
While some potential owners may not want to spend more than £5 million on a car that is not allowed to turn around on a public motorway, the RB17’s track focus comes with some big advantages. Essentially, Newey was given the freedom to design a car for the sole purpose of speed, without having to compromise to comply with any kind of regulatory framework.
Road cars must meet all kinds of emissions and legality tests, but a race car has fewer regulations that apply. And because it’s not designed to race in a specific category, all the clever ideas that have been banned in motorsport for years can be applied to the RB17 as Newey sees fit.
“Of course there are laws of physics,” Newey pointed out when asked if designing the RB17 was a liberating experience, “and we needed to encapsulate it to have two people, of which at least quite a tall person.
“So we have those limitations and we also need to use existing tires, because developing tires from the very beginning tends to be a very long project, so we have some limited and of course safe.
“But outside of that, it’s really a car with no rules.”
The goal is to deliver F1 levels of performance when carrying two people, with part of the reason for the second seat being the need for a driving instructor on board with the owner to provide service. driver training.
And when Newey talks about F1’s level of performance, he really means it.
“What we’re talking about is lap times, ultimately all we know,” said Newey when asked to quantify the kind of F1 performance the RB17 will be capable of. “Of course, it’s going to be lap specific and the big battle is really weight, so building a car big enough to carry two people with the roof on it for the sake of practicality and safety.
“That automatically gets slower than a Formula One car, and then it does all the things you need to do to get performance against that inherent extra weight.”
The car will feature ground-effect aerodynamics, like a modern F1 car, although with skirts to help seal the airflow between the underside of the car and the track (something banned in F1 in 1981. ). Newey is keeping the exact design details private, but expect plenty of F1-inspired tech from previous decades to contribute to some truly remarkable laps.
“Any car design starts with the concept of what you want to achieve – in this case F1 performance levels,” he added. “Then, trying to achieve that rather difficult goal with a two-seater, you can imagine we would use all the tricks we’ve learned over the years in lifting technologies. high performance which was later banned in F1.
“They can be reintroduced with the same research and design approach that characterizes the Red Bull Formula One team. So it’s a Formula One approach applied to a slightly different problem. “
A twin-turbo V8 will power the car, producing 1,100 horsepower rivaling F1. It has not yet been decided whether Red Bull will seek an outside partner to build the engine or incorporate production into the new Red Bull Powertrains division at its factory, which is set to build its own F1 engine. team from 2026 onwards.
Newey added: “Power is pretty much a relatively easy thing these days, it’s the advancement in engine technology. “I think the most important thing is to try to keep the weight down, so we’ve done a lot of work on that.
“Then it really makes sure that the aerodynamics, the other big contributor, is doing well and there are quite a few tricks in the past that we would have used to get there.”
Only 50 cars (plus development prototypes) will be produced, with production of the RB17 slated to begin in 2025. Red Bull aspires to find customers who are genuinely interested in driving. than those who want to invest to “flip” it for profit after it ships.
But even for a Newey-designed hypercar, £5 million seems pretty expensive and makes the Valkyrie seem like a relative bargain given the £2.5 million to £3 million price tag on the road.
Newey said: “I always feel a bit embarrassed when we talk about £5m. “However, the reality is that I will spend [on development] whatever the income!
“The material that goes into these cars, when you start taking them to Formula One level, it’s scary. And then, when you add research and testing, it’s [£5 million] is the number you’re looking at when you’re only making 50 pieces. “
But those willing and able to bid for the RB17 will know they’re getting something truly special: their very own Newey-designed track car capable of matching their lap times. Max VerstappenF1 car.
