The RB17 is British engineering at its brilliant best – a £6m ‘ultimate track car’ with all the good stuff F1 got rid of
THIS thing can lap Silverstone ONE SECOND FASTER than Max Verstappen’s F1 car with room for two.
God’s honest.
The egg-scrambling RB17 is F1 design genius Adrian Newey “off the leash”. No FIA constraints. No cost-cap. All the good stuff F1 got rid of.
Let me talk you through the headlines:
- 1,200hp
- 900kg (lighter than a Suzuki Ignis)
- Active suspension (F1 banned it, 1994)
- Blown diffuser (F1 banned it, 2012)
- Active aero
- Staggered two-seat layout
- V10 engine revs to 15,000rpm
- Ten-into-one exhaust (you can imagine what that’s going to sound like)
- 217mph
- 50 cars
- £6MILLION
Newey said: “In our simulation loops it would comfortably be on pole at Silverstone.”
What’s “comfortably” in your world?
“About one second quicker. In that ball park.” Bejeezus.
The beauty of RB17 – apart from its obvious beauty, obviously – is that Newey insisted on a second seat for an instructor to coach the minted owner.
He said: “What I had in my own head, rightly or wrongly, if you take up a new sport, golf for instance, you hit a few balls and they go flying everywhere.
“If you enjoy it, you want to better yourself, so you take a caddy to coach you and get better.
“This is that same philosophy. By having two seats, you can either have a coach in the passenger seat, or you can have your friend or partner or whatever.
“You can grow with the car and develop with the car to whatever performance level you feel comfortable with.
“It’s trying to bring that excitement to people who have the desire to experience it but haven’t necessarily yet got the experience.
“There’s a lot of adjustability within the cockpit to adjust the balance through the corner phases to give you more stability, or be slightly more edgy, depending on where you are with your driving ability.
“This is very much a turn-key car where you could turn up, put the key in, go off down a pitlane and be doing Formula 1 lap times.”
RB17 is British engineering at its brilliant best. The car will built in-house at Red Bull’s Milton Keynes HQ.
The 4.5-litre naturally-aspirated V10, producing 1,000hp, comes from Cosworth just down the road in Northampton.
The V10 is aided and abetted by a 200hp e-motor for a total output of 1,200hp.
Red Bull boss Christian Horner said: “We don’t want these cars to sit in collector’s museums.
‘Free rein’
“Part of the ownership is to do track days. They are designed to be run and driven.
“We’ll provide a complete service, like a racehorse in training.
“We can look after the car, maintain it, deliver it to the circuit, and the owner turns up and enjoys a great day with other drivers.
“RB17 is pure Adrian. His utopia. You can see influences from his cars over the years.
“The group has been incredibly generous to allow him a free rein of tech to come up with his ultimate track car. We see it as a celebration of Adrian’s time at Red Bull.”
RB17 got Gordon Ramsay’s juices flowing. He said to Adrian Newey, above: “Really beautiful. Well done. Can I fit in it?”
Newey told me later: “He’ll easily fit. We designed it around a guy who is 6ft 4.” Ramsay’s already ordered one.