Seat Time
Car and Driver|June 2019

Getting a test drive in the Aston Martin Valkyrie, the hypercar under development with Red Bull Racing, is for now about as likely as us being able to aff ord one. Instead, we drive it the way the engineers do: in the racing simulator.

Mike Duff
Seat Time

While the reality is an okay place for most of us—provided the booze doesn’t run out—it poses several problems as an environment in which to develop new cars. Building prototypes years ahead of a new model’s introduction is hugely expensive, as is transporting them to the far-flung areas of the world where they can be tested away from prying eyes. The mules need fuel and tires and multiple versions of all manner of different parts. The technicians that tend to them need hotels and meals—and beer. All of which add to the cost and time necessary to create even the humblest new car.

But when that new car is among the most radical ever made, costs compound so frighteningly as to suffocate any business case. That’s where the other kind of reality, the one prefixed with a V, comes in. Modern computing power means it is now possible to make a software model of a car that is detailed enough to be practically indistinguishable from the real thing, at least when it comes to gathering data. Aston Martin’s upcoming Valkyrie hypercar is essentially the fever dream of Red Bull Racing (RBR) CTO Adrian Newey, a man for whom the realm of Formula 1 has become a playground for his imagination. The only way to drive his Valkyrie, for now, is in the simulator.

Virtual reality not only allows this car to undergo detailed testing before the first physical prototype is finished, but it has also fundamentally enabled the project from the very beginning. Chris Goodwin, Aston’s high-performance test driver and the man leading the Valkyrie’s dynamic development, says, “Without VR, we wouldn’t be able to do a project like this given all the time in the world—it would be unaffordable and it would take years and years.”

This story is from the June 2019 edition of Car and Driver.

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This story is from the June 2019 edition of Car and Driver.

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