Red Bull gives you wings, and the energy drink empire’s first production hypercar will fly around a track with F1-commensurate speed. The Swiss proprietor of zippy beverages is, of course, also the owner of the most dominant F1 team of the decade. That is success is thanks largely to the efforts of legendary race car designer Adrian Newey, whose almost two-decade tenure with Red Bull Racing has resulted in 117 race wins, six constructors’ titles and seven drivers’ titles, as Formula 1’s blog points out.
Newey also aided in the design of the Aston Martin Valkyrie hypercar, but he didn’t want Red Bull’s to be a sequel to the 1,139-horsepower road car. “It had to be something different,” he told Formula 1. “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?’”
With that mission, Newey and his 120-person team at Red Bull Advanced Technologies created the track-only RB17. Road and Track rattles off some key characteristics: a carbon fiber monocoque chassis; a hybrid-assisted, mid-mounted V10 that churns 1,200 horsepower to the rear wheels through a carbon fiber gearbox and red lines at a bonkers 15,000 rpm; the same type of active aerodynamic package that Newey helped spearhead in F1, and a 217-mph top speed. The RB17 also weighs less than 2,000 pounds, which is lighter than most smart cars.
Red Bull claims that the RB17 will be able to deliver “F1-equivalent lap times…while remaining easy to own and operate.” Newey added, “If you want a more forgiving car or more stable car, you turn the knob one way. And if you want something that’s more reactive, then you go the other way, so you can basically grow with the car as you get better.”
He also teed up an analogy that really drives the point home. “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.”
Only 50 RB17s will be be available to purchase for over $6 million each, according to Top Gear. That steep price also includes “one-of-a-kind driver development and tailoring of the car to suit individual driver’s needs,” as well invitations to owner events at some of the world’s greatest circuits.