EXCLUSIVE: Adrian Newey talks designing the RB17

Newey’s work on the RB17 began shortly after completion of the Aston Martin Valkyrie, which he also had a major role in designing. The initial inspirations began to flow from his pencil in 2017, but he didn’t sit down to actually cobble those fleeting thoughts into a full design until the Christmas break of 2020.

“The idea I started to formulate really was, ‘OK, is it possible to create a two-seater track car that is capable of Formula 1 lap times,” Newey told us, “but accessible to all drivers so that they can enjoy that performance potential and grow with the car and learn about it?’”

That original drawing of the car was issued in January 2021, but then he found himself sidelined by more pressing matters. “Personally, 2021 was a very busy year,” Newey explained, “because as well as that very embryonic research into RB17, we also had a tough championship battle with Mercedes. I was also working with the guys on the research for what became the RB18, the 2022 car, to that very new set of regulations.

“But I was able to put some time in with the Advanced Technology engineers into that fundamental research [for the RB17]. For instance, the first car I drew was actually four-wheel drive in as much as it had the electric motor on the front axle.

“Having done a load of simulation, it turned out because we're not working to a weight limit, that it’s actually faster to save the weight and put the electric motor in the rear axle and make it two-wheel drive, which I was very happy about.”

The following three years from 2021 until January 2024 were spent developing the concept for the RB17, figuring out engineering specifics and packaging requirements for a track car that would be capable of matching Formula 1 lap times.

Fittingly, Newey said that the process was recognisable to that of the development of an F1 car, albeit stretched over a much longer period. “That allowed us to go into a lot of detail, and that's the thing that has worked particularly well, by giving us all that time you could almost argue that the car we're now producing is actually the third evolution of that ’21 car because we're used to working in 12-month cycles. So it's had a lot of research going into it.”

RB17: Newey off the leash

So, what kind of thinking goes into a car like this? At the launch of the RB17, Red Bull Racing Team Principal Christian Horner referred to it as: “Adrian Newey off the leash,” so what does that look like from inside the head of one of F1’s greatest ever car designers?

“I suppose what I had in my mind is almost the golf model. Somebody decides they want to start playing golf, so they’ll probably go along, perhaps start hitting the ball, probably have a coach, and start playing. Obviously, to start with their handicap will be quite poor, but they’ll then get two enjoyments out of the game: one is actually playing golf, but the other is the challenge of improving your handicap, getting better at it.

“This was really the concept with the RB17, that you can start regardless, within reason, of your experience level. Being a two-seater, if you wish to you can have a coach in the passenger seat, or you can have your partner or friend or whatever. And then make it adaptable enough that it can be fun from the start.

“You're not completely intimidated and overwhelmed by it, but with practice and application you can get the enjoyment of driving it, but also get the enjoyment of the challenge of bettering yourself.”

That’s the philosophy, but how does it get transferred into the most extreme track car in history? That, Newey says, is when the complexity begins, because making a car with unprecedented performance also something that can be easily handled by a relatively inexperienced driver sounds to us like an impossible challenge. He and his team at Red Bull Advanced Technologies have tackled the problem from several directions.

Firstly, there’s the handling; the RB17 has been designed to be almost infinitely adjustable. “It’s very adaptable in terms of its balance,” he said. The goal was to develop a car that's “quite benign, if you wish it to be, with various levels of grip.

“Active suspension is probably the biggest single key in that, because that means that the software can change the balance of the car very easily. It obviously has to be mapped for that, while the active aerodynamics on top allow you to change the downforce level quite a lot.” And these will all be adjustable from inside the car, to adapt the RB17’s response through corner entry, apex, or exit.

“It's the turn of a knob,” Newey explained, and while the software behind those controls has to be quite highly developed, it’s that usability that is so important, rather than having to make minuscule setup changes on a laptop in the garage.

“Despite the performance capability of the car, if you wish to you could run this on your own. You can put your helmet on, turn the key, and off you go down the pit lane.”

RB17: All of Adrian Newey’s F1 cars in one package

Christian Horner has said that the RB17 is a celebration of Adrian Newey’s time at Red Bull, a swan song of sorts that encapsulates his career to date and brings together all of his greatest design ideas into one unrivalled car. “The only thing it doesn’t have is an F-Duct,” he said, and that tells you everything there is to know about how extreme this car is.

So, how much of a challenge was it for Newey to bring all those elements together? “In terms of wrapping all the features of the car into one package, then it is unique,” he said. “It's a very different challenge because in F1 you have two main things: one is the regulations which obviously restrict a lot of things, and the other is that F1 is only about reliability and lap time. Those are the only two things that count, really. “With [RB17] it's all about owner enjoyment and the driver experience, which I think is an overused term now, but it describes what we're hoping to achieve.”

“Then there’s other, more difficult to quantify aspects. These cars should be considered as art, so we are very keen to make it a car that you enjoy owning, simply sitting as a display piece, and then the aural experience.”

Ah yes. The sound. This is, of course, an incredibly important aspect of any car, particularly one intended to provide thrills beyond measure on a race track. The RB17 is powered by a 4.5-litre naturally aspirated Cosworth V10 engine, but that wasn’t always the plan.

“When we first started on the car, to achieve the performance level we wanted it was going to be a twin-turbo V8, because that's the engine that gave the power we wanted to achieve from the combustion side of it.” That power target was 1,000PS (735kW), a number that seems to be the benchmark for all the world’s most extreme track cars these days. But it turned out the sound of the V8 was far from the dream, so Newey instead set a new challenge.

“OK, can we do a normally aspirated engine that's capable of 1,000 horsepower that still comes in under 150kg? The answer, of course, is yes if you rev it, and by going to pneumatic valves we achieved that.”

But again, it was about more than simply achieving those power targets with an intricately tuned V10 engine; it still had to retain the RB17’s user-friendly ethos. Newey and his team carried out an awful lot of work on the practicalities to ensure that.

“It has to be a practical pneumatic valve solution where you don't have to take the heads off to change the seals every 1,000 miles, and that's where we've ended up. So, it's now gone from a V8 twin-turbo to a V10 normally aspirated, 15,000rpm, 4.5 litre, 1,000 horsepower.”

A good decision if you ask us, and one that will no doubt help to ensure that the eventual owners of the RB17 will be among the luckiest people in the world. But, there is no doubt they might also feel a little overawed by the prospect of getting behind the wheel of their near-£6million hypercar, a fact that Newey is cognisant of: “you probably don't want to step into it with a hangover.”

But more importantly, he wants them to be able to enjoy the experience of ownership, the look, the sound, the driving experience. “That adrenaline of being able to develop yourself, in a safe environment, with a car that has huge potential. So as you build your experience you can start to feel the G-forces, feel the sheer speed of the car.

“I've been lucky enough over the years to drive a huge variety of cars from, historics through to F1 cars. I hugely enjoy driving historics, but for the sheer adrenaline rush and physicality of driving a car fast. You don't need to be physically strong or fit, but the forces you start to feel, and the exhilaration you get from going that fast is something else.”

We have absolutely no doubt that the RB17 is going to deliver performance and thrills on a level we’ve never seen before. Just by looking at it you can tell it’s going to be extreme, and having been forged by the pen of a genius it’s going to be as close to driving perfection as it’s possible to be.

The 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed takes place from the 11th-14th July, and you can watch every moment of the action on our live stream right here on GRR!