Aston’s Red Bull link
F1 team to influence Vanquish
Aston Martin’s upcoming Vanquish mid-engined supercar, a rival to the Ferrari 488 and Mclaren 720S, will be developed within the Red Bull F1 team’s factory.
Aston and Red Bull have established a new Advanced Performance Centre at the F1 team’s Milton Keynes campus. Aston is in the process of moving 130 staff from its advanced engineering department at Gaydon to the new facility in order to develop the new supercar, due in 2020, among other models.
The relationship between the two companies is rooted in road car product development, rather than being a simple case of Aston Martin logos appearing on Red Bull’s F1 cars. The first co-developed model will be the Valkyrie hypercar, with a slightly less-expensive model, christened “son of Valkyrie” by Aston boss Andy Palmer, also in development.
Now the Vanquish is set to follow suit because “this type of car needs an obsession with weight and aero”, according to Palmer. “It’s being developed in the same office as Valkyrie, so explicit skills will be transferred to it by osmosis.”
Palmer said development of the Valkyrie is progressing but such projects “are always a bit harder than you think” and added: “What we’re trying to create is probably the fastest car ever, certainly of this decade. I suspect regulatory and emissions pressures will prevent a car like this from happening again. It’s on target, but I’m getting grey hairs on a daily basis on decisions.”
Valkyrie development cars are in production now ahead of hitting the road and track by September, and the first cars are scheduled to be with customers by the end of next year. Chris Goodwin, Aston’s new chief test driver recently recruited from Mclaren, is currently conducting simulator testing of the Valkyrie.
Porsche recently set an outright lap record of 5min 19.546sec at the Nürburging with an unrestricted version of its Le Mans-winning LMP1 sports car, and Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has said the Valkyrie could challenge that time. Palmer said he “fancied a run around the Nürburgring” but “whether it’ll be faster than an unrestricted LMP1 car, let’s see”.