F1 News: Christian Horner Hints At Red Bull Building Road Cars

Red Bull's first hypercar will be called the RB17.

Adrian Newey, the mastermind behind aerodynamics, has not only crafted Red Bull's formidable championship contenders in recent years but is also reported to have played a role in designing Red Bull's inaugural road-going hypercar, known as the RB17.

Previously, the acclaimed designer played a role in the creation of Aston Martin's impressive Valkyrie hypercar. However, his current top-secret project with Red Bull comes with an astonishing price tag of £5 million, serving as the driving force for Newey to prolong his collaboration with the Milton Keynes outfit.

Speaking to Autocar about the road car project, team principal Christian Horner said:

“Adrian wanted to do a car [for us] back in 2014, and at that point in time, we found a route through that by doing all the design work for the Valkyrie in partnership with Aston Martin.

“Valkyrie is a stunning vehicle and I’m sure it will be a great success, but you’re always learning, whether in Formula 1 or on the advanced technologies side.

“[RBAT] has now existed for close to eight years and there’s an awful lot of knowledge that has been built up in that time.

“With the budget cap era [in F1], if you want to retain resources there have to be projects that can justify their existence.

“This is a perfect project utilising the skill sets that we have, so it will complement our Formula 1 activities rather than distract from them.” 

Aston Martin Press Image

Revealing the similarities between the RB17 and a Formula 1 car, Red Bull Advanced Technologies technical director Rob Gray said: 

“There’s a lot in common between this car and the Formula 1 car in terms of the general engineering principles used to design it. Most of this car, the core, we are capable of building in-house. That’s why we have such a low volume target.

“We know how to build low-volume vehicles. We don’t want to do mass production.

“We want to use the hybrid to complement the internal combustion engine, rather than dominate it.”

One might be surprised to know that only 50 units of the RB17 will be released after it is unveiled sometime this year, most of which are already sold out.