Red Bull Formula 1 technical boss Adrian Newey has revealed he still has plans for more road cars beyond his Aston Martin Valkyrie. The legendary F1 designer helped oversee the design of the British brand’s new hypercar as part of a collaboration between Red Bull and Aston Martin, with the goal of creating a road-legal car as fast as a Le Mans Prototype.
The Valkyrie takes advantage of Newey’s expertise in aerodynamics to create a tightly packaged and highly aerodynamically efficient hypercar. It’s powered by a bespoke 6.5-litre V12 engine developed by racing specialists Cosworth, and supplemented by an electric motor from Croatian experts, Rimac. All up the Valkyrie makes 865kW (that’s 1160hp) and 752Nm of torque to generate its racecar-levels of performance.
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While Newey began the Valkyrie project he won’t finish it due to the split between the energy drinks company and Aston Martin, with the car maker now running its own F1 team. But speaking to British publication Autocar at the recent Goodwood Festival of Speed where Newey drove a Valkyrie pre-production prototype, the multiple championship-winning designer made it clear he wasn’t done with road cars just yet.
He explained that the foundations laid by the Valkyrie project, including the expansion of its Red Bull Advanced Technologies (RBAT) business to move out of pure racing projects, means he could work on another road car.
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“That makes it easier to take on a road car or a track-biased car that can be put on the road in a tighter timescale, because of the extra experience we’ve gathered,” Newey told Autocar about RBAT.
“So yes, absolutely, we would like to do another vehicle. Exactly what that is and what it’s targeted at is subject to debate. Watch this space is probably the easiest way to put it.”
It’s believed the ability to work on the Valkyrie project, fulfilling a long-held dream of designing his own road car, was a key factor in Red Bull retaining Newey’s services during his last contract negotiations.
The partnership between RBAT and Aston Martin was meant to continue beyond the Valkyrie to the recently-revealed Valhalla, which began life as the AM-RB-003 concept; with the ‘RB’ standing for Red Bull. With Aston Martin now under the leadership of Lawrence Stroll and forging its own path away from Red Bull in F1, the decision was taken to bring both the final development of the Valkyrie and the entire development of the Valhalla in-house. Which is a major factor in the Valhalla being so different to the AM-RB-003 concept.
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