Aston Marvel

The most gifted Formula 1 designer in decades and a firm famed for the beauty of its cars are working together to build a machine of game-changing qualities not seen since the McLaren F1. This is the Aston Martin-Red Bull 001, and this is the story so far

- Jethro Bovingdon

IT’S NOT WHAT you expected, right? This is the AM-RB 001. A collaboration between Aston Martin and Red Bull Advanced Technologies involving lots o very talented people. However, it will forever b known as ‘Adrian Newey’s road car’. That’s no slight on anyone else involved, more a mark of th significance of the most successful F1 designer o all time finally diverting his vast brain power to a car that people – very rich people, admittedly – can actually buy. I imagined it’d be covered in thos intricate aero tricks, flips and slits that give you a migraine if you stare at them for long enough on an F1 or LMP1 car. But no. The AM-RB 001 look so pure and simple. It’s beautiful.

We’ll come to the design itself in a  moment, and how the whole Newey/Aston Martin relationship works. For now, let’s concentrate on the outlin details we have about the AM-RB 001. It’s a two seater supercar but the occupants will sit with their feet above their hip-point – just like inan F1orLMP car. However, it won’t be tiny and uncomfortable and it’s built for fully formed adults, unlike mos of Newey’s F1 cars! That said, it’s still compact for a car of its kind, being around 1900mm wid (a LaFerrari is 1992mm, a 918 Spyder 1940mm) just 4000mm or thereabouts long (a LaFerrar is 4702mm, a McLaren F1 4288mm and a 718 Cayman 4379mm) and less than 1016mm high (so lower even than an original Ford GT40). It’s mad from carbon fibre, the composition and thickness of which (it varies depending on strength requirements) is defined by Newey and Red Bul Advanced Technologies. The AM-RB001 will have one horsepower for each kilogram of weight and we expect it to come in at around 1000kg.