Aston Martin Is Making An F1-Fast Hypercar With The Help Of Adrian Newey
Aston Martin’s rebirth is already off to a good start with a new V12 engine and a promising successor for the DB9, but as well as replacing its ageing line-up, it’s been announced today that the manufacturer will also build a hypercar. A properly bonkers hypercar.
It’s all thanks to Aston Martin becoming an ‘Innovation Partner’ with Red Bull Racing, and the deal includes - as well as Aston’s wing logo appearing on Red Bull F1 cars this year - the expertise of a certain Adrian Newey. Yep, the legendary F1 designer and Red Bull’s Chief Technical Officer will collaborate with Marek Reichman - Aston’s Chief Creative Officer - to produce the new hypercar.
It’s codenamed ‘AM-RB 001’, and while exact details are currently lacking, it’s set to be stonkingly fast. Aston Martin told us to expect something along the lines of “F1 crossed with LMP1”, and a package which should be faster than a current F1 car around Silverstone. And yes, it’ll still be road legal…
As far as engines go, we’d expect Aston Martin to use its new twin-turbo 5.2-litre V12, with the boost pressure cranked up to a healthy degree. Since the car will no doubt receive a lot of F1-inspired tech thanks to the presence of Newey, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the internal combustion engine’s output supplemented by electric motors and a hybrid system.
As to what it’ll look like, that’s anyone’s guess; all we have to go on so far is this sketch. And it’ll be a little while before we see it in the metal - given that this is a clean sheet design of a highly bespoke nature, the first cars probably won’t be in the hands of owners until at least 2018.
What do you think of this latest move from Aston Martin? Will it be able to take the fight to the next generation of hypercars from the likes of McLaren, Porsche, Ferrari and Koenigsegg? Let us know in the comments…
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
This is seriously cool, we’re all better off with more companies trying to push the boundaries of whats possible.
I personally LOVE this stuff!
Am I the only one that got frustrated about Koenigsegg being listed last at the hypercar game? Despite being the only true hypercar among the others? (Dont get me wrong i love them all but you cant compare them). I truly hope Aston will manage something close to Agera or Regera in terms of performance AND durability.
If you mean that Koenigseggs are at a level higher than hypercars, I would agree
Why Aston Martin chose Red Bull as a technical partner ? Because they give you wings
‘Flies away’
Downforce, bro
It seems that I am not the only one that can fly away.
tweet tweet
I guess thats how it’s going to lap the track faster than a formula one car?
Let me get this straight. Aston Martin is building a STREET LEGAL LMP1 car that is FASTER THAN AN F1 car. Just let that sink in a bit.
And considering it’s road legal, it’s a bit of an embarrassment on Bernie Ecclestone
the’re building a red bull X-fan car :D i’m calling it
I’ll be waiting to see that, seems interesting…
something like… faster than One-77?
Aging has no e, and for f—-‘s sake, STOP saying ‘bonkers’.
Wifh that out of my system. I can’t wait to see what this looks like
Ageing is correct, I believe you’ll find it is the spelling we use in ENGLAND, you know, the place where English is used as our first language
I’d like to know where the “faster than an F1 car around silverstone” bit comes from, the press release etc doesn’t mention it, and it’s an impossible goal for a road-legal car.
Road regulations mean you simply couldn’t generate enough downforce to match an F1 car, and that’s before you get onto power-weight distributions etc. How much cornering/braking force can current hyper-cars generate? 2g? You’ll need 2.5x that to match F1.
Current F1 cars have 900hp with the hybrid gubbins in 702kg this year, LMP1 have the same kind of power with 850kg. To get the same from a McLaren P1 you’d need 1800hp.
I’m not saying it won’t be immense (an F1-tech-inspired road car designed by the best designer of his generation with a twin-turbo V12 sounds great to me), but I think the performance available will be sub-F1/LMP1.
Considering how powerful ground effect can be, I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility. Probably through some kind of deployable skirting and electro magnetic dampers they could exceed the levels of downforce on a formula 1 car without even using wings (which they’ll undoubtedly do anyway)
Fan car?
Koenigsegg is a bit far off. They are Mega cars,
Ferrari, Porsche, McLaren? if they can make the Vulcan with out Newey and turbos. imagine what they could do with those 2 things.