Newey: RB17 speed limited by tyres

Adrian Newey’s latest creation, the RB17 hypercar, was unveiled at the Goodwood Festival of Speed ​​in July and we talked about it. But new details regarding this unique car are gradually emerging, in particular the creator spoke about some of the RB17’s features in the official Red Bull podcast, called Talking Bulls.

Like other car manufacturers in this class, Red Bull Advanced Technologies (the technology division of Red Bull Racing) had to increase the speed limit to around 370 km/h for safety reasons, including to reduce the load on the tires.

Adrian Newey: “Tyres are one of the aspects that need serious attention. Early on we signed a contract with Michelin to develop rubber specifically designed for this car. But even with these tyres we were forced to reduce the downforce at speeds above 240 km/h.

Of course we are talking about the total load on the tyres, i.e. this is the weight of the car plus the downforce generated by the aerodynamic body kit. 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 inevitably be limited by the tyres.

During the development of the hypercar, many versions were made. At the very beginning it was assumed that it would have a four-wheel drive transmission, i.e. an electric motor would be placed near the front axle. But calculations showed that the car would be faster if it were made lighter and the drive was limited to the rear axle only.

Initially, we had the idea of ​​putting a V8 engine with two turbines, although of course everyone wanted it to be naturally aspirated. But the question was: how can you make a naturally aspirated engine powerful enough and at the same time compact, so that its size and weight correspond to the limits that we have outlined?

This turned out to be quite a difficult task, our engine engineers started proposing various solutions and as a result, a naturally aspirated V10 engine was created.

We tried to build a machine that even someone with relatively limited experience in driving such equipment could handle. Such people will appreciate that the car is forgiving, has no tendency to oversteer and 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 downforce, pick different tires, etc. And in the hands of a professional driver, it will be able to complete laps with results comparable to the capabilities of Formula 1 cars.

Recently one of our customers worked on the simulator, and he is not a professional racer, but a very well-trained amateur, and in the simulator in the RB17 he showed a time that would have taken pole at Silverstone by a second.”