Red Bull to build track-only, 1,100-hp RB17 hypercar

The engineering arm of the Red Bull Racing Formula One team will develop a hypercar that will rival the troubled Valkyrie project it helped create for Aston Martin.

The RB17 hypercar will have a starting price of 5 million pounds ($6.1 million) before local taxes and will be restricted to 50 units when production starts in 2025, the company said in an announcement on Tuesday.

The cars will be legal for racetracks only, allowing the company to achieve the “purest execution of an F1-inspired hypercar,” it said in a statement.

Tthe team’s in-house Red Bull Advanced Technologies division is developing the two seater. A V8 hybrid engine producing more than 1,100 hp will power the car, the UK-based company said. The source of the engine was not announced and no performance figures were given.

The configuration of the combustion engine splits the Valkyrie, which uses a 1,155 hp hybrid V12 unit, and the AMG-Mercedes One hypercar, employing a variation of the Mercedes F1 team’s 1.6-liter V6 hybrid powertrain making more than 1,000 hp.

The RB17 uses the Red Bull team’s naming system for its Formula One cars, with the “17” reviving the missing number between last year’s RB16b and this year’s RB18.

Red Bull said that the price would include “more than the car” and feature access to the Red Bull racing team via simulators, vehicle program development and on-track training and experiences.

The new car will be built at Red Bull Advanced Technologies base alongside the F1 team in Milton Keynes, central England, the company said. Engineering and producing the car will create 100 new jobs, it said.

“The RB17 marks an important milestone in the evolution of Red Bull Advanced Technologies, now fully capable of creating and manufacturing a series production car at our Red Bull Technology Campus,” Christian Horner, CEO of both Red Bull Advanced Technologies and the F1 team, said in a statement.

Red Bull Advanced Technologies developed the capability to design a hypercar while working on the Valkyrie, which was unveiled in 2017.

As with the Valkyrie project, the RB17 will be overseen by Red Bull’s chief technology officer, Adrian Newey. A sketch of the car hinted at a similarly uncompromising design that tests the limits of aerodynamic capability. 

The car will be built around a carbon-composite tub and will feature “the most advanced ground-effect package available in a series production car,” the company said.

The design of the Valkyrie was so intricate that Aston Martin struggled to put it into production, and the company has only just started delivering the first cars following its initial promise to start deliveries in 2019.

The Red Bull partnership with Aston Martin ended when new Aston chairman Lawrence Stroll bought the Force India Formula 1 team and rebranded it Aston Martin for the 2021 season, severing a sponsorship deal with Red Bull. 

“Being Aston Martin F1 changed a bit the relationship with Red Bull,” former Aston Martin CEO Tobias Moers said last year. Red Bull finished the contractual obligations with the Valkyrie but did not start work on a follow-up model, the Valhalla, as originally planned, Moers said.