Unveiling the RB17 Hypercar: Adrian Newey’s Revolutionary Creation with Michelin Tires and a V10 Engine

Adrian Newey’s latest creation, the RB17 hypercar, was unveiled at the Goodwood Festival of Speed ​​in July, and we’re talking about it told. But little by little new details about this special car are becoming known, in particular, its creator talked about some of the features of the RB17 in the official Red Bull podcast, called Talking Bulls.

Like other car manufacturers in this class, Red Bull Advanced Technologies (Red Bull Racing’s technology division) had to force the speed limit to around 370 km/h for safety reasons, including to keep the load deflated the tires.

Adrian Newey: “One of the aspects that really needs to be taken into account is tyres. Already in the early stages, we signed a contract with Michelin to develop rubber specially designed for this car. But even with these tires we had to reduce force levels at speeds higher than 240 km/h.

In fact, we are talking about the total load on the tires, ie This is the weight of the car in addition to the decline that comes from the aerodynamic package body. Overall, this was one of the reasons why we kept the weight of the RB17 as low as possible, because we knew that the speed would definitely be limited by the tires.

During the development of the hypercar, many versions were created. At the very beginning it was assumed that it would have an all-wheel drive transmission, ie an electric motor would be located in the area of ​​the front axle. But calculations showed that the car would become faster if it was made lighter and the driver was limited to the rear axle only.

At first, we had the idea of ​​putting a V8 engine with two turbines, although, of course, everyone wanted it to be a natural aspiration. But the question was how to make an atmospheric engine powerful enough and at the same time compact so that its size and weight correspond to the limits we have described?

This was a very difficult task, our engine engineers began to propose different solutions, and as a result, a naturally aspirated V10 engine was created.

We tried to build a machine that even a person with some experience in piloting such equipment could handle. Such people understand that the car is forgiving, that it does not tend to oversteer, and that it is not too difficult to drive.

But as your skills improve, the car will adapt to it – you can tune it, choose different levels of strength, choose different tires, etc. And in the hands of a professional racer, it will be able to complete laps with results similar to the capabilities of Formula 1 cars.

Recently, one of our clients was working on the simulator, and he is not a professional racer, but a well-trained amateur. And in the simulator in the RB17 he showed a time that would have seen him win pole at Silverstone for a second.