Red Bull unveils RB17 track car
This extraordinary weapon comes from the mind of the most successful designer in Grand Prix history.
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Mere mortals will never know what it feels like to bang wheels with Max Verstappen or Lewis Hamilton with a Formula 1 world championship on the line.
But they might get the chance to experience F1-levels of speed and grip on a circuit with something like the Red Bull RB17.
Designed by Adrian Newey – the man responsible for designing title-winning cars driven by the likes of Max Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel, not to mention Grand Prix winners Daniel Ricciardo and Mark Webber – this car is intended to bring the world of F1 within reach of regular people.
As regular as spectacularly wealthy people get, anyway.
Priced from £5 million ($9.6m) plus taxes and operational costs likely to rival running a private army, this car is for the elite.
The track-focused Red Bull RB17 will sit alongside rare beasts such as the Mercedes-AMG One, Ferrari 499P and Aston Martin Valkyrie in the climate-controlled garages of 50 billionaire enthusiasts.
Power comes from an F1-inspired 4.5-litre V10 engine capable of spinning to 15,000rpm while producing a soundtrack similar to Schumacher-era F1 cars.
An additional electric motor chips in to push total outputs to about 900kW – enough to give Red Bull’s monster a power-to-weight ratio similar to current F1 machines.
As with modern Grand Prix machines, it drives the rear wheels through a paddle-shift automatic transmission.
It weighs less than 900 kilos, and bodywork producing 1.7 tonnes of downforce should give it more traction than a kitten on carpet.
The car benefits from tech banned from the world of Formula 1, including traction control, active suspension and active aerodynamics.
And unlike road-going rivals, it is not hindered by any requirement to be legal to drive on public highways.
This track-only machine promises to give drivers more toys to play with than any other car on sale.
While Mercedes-AMG drivers can tinker with traction control on the fly and Porsche GT3 RS pilots have the ability to adjust differential and damper behaviour using the steering wheel, the RB17 goes further still by allowing drivers to fiddle with the car’s aerodynamic balance at speed.
A choice of three Michelin tyres will include special “confidential” rubber ready to deliver the ultimate in one-lap pace, at what we guess might be the price of a modest new hatchback.
The RB17’s engine is built by Cosworth, the same company responsible for powering Bugatti’s Tourbillon, Gordon Murray’s GMA T50 and the Aston Martin Valkyrie.
The latter might be a sore point for Aston Martin customers, as Red Bull and Newey worked on the Valkyrie before the companies parted ways.
Newey told Formula1.com lessons learned during the development of the Valkyrie helped improve the RB17.
The Red Bull designer said his car was intended for people who took the sport of driving seriously, and were ready to take their skill to new heights.
“I started to think, ‘Okay, could we come up with a car which would be accessible to drivers with relatively limited track experience and they could then grow with the car?’,” he said.
“The model I kind of pictured in my own head, if you like, is say you decide you want to start playing golf, then you go to a golf club, hit a few balls and the balls go flying everywhere, but you enjoy it. Then you think, ‘Right, I want to get better at this’, so you employ a caddie, coach …
“Part of the enjoyment is playing the game, and part of it is [helping] yourself to become better at the game, and this is trying to take that same model.”
It’s wild to think that the purchase of a $10 million car is like a set of golf clubs and course membership to the sort of people who collect mega dollar machines.
Then again, it’s nice to know that it’s possible to buy a Powerball ticket and learn to steer like an F1 driver before taking friends for rides in the ultimate track toy.
Originally published as Red Bull unveils RB17 track car
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