here is more info

Aston's $3 million hypercar will be as quick as an F1 car and as beautiful as a One-77. Aston Martin has announced its working on a “ground-breaking hypercar” in collaboration with Formula One team Red Bull Racing. Red Bull’s Chief Technical Officer and the most successful F1 designer of all time, Adrian Newey, and Aston’s Chief Creative Officer, Marek Reichman, who has been the carmaker’s design chief since 2015 will join forces to create “the ultimate hypercar.” Codenamed ‘AM-RB 001,’ the new hypercar will synergize cutting-edge F1 tech with an unmistakable Aston design

eichamn is the man behind such stunning creations as the One-77, Aston Martin Vulcan and the carmaker’s latest offering, the DB11. “We are in the process of developing a hypercar that combines the latest in aerodynamics from F1TM and the stunning design language of an Aston Martin sports car,” said Reichman. “The opportunity to collaborate with Adrian (Newey) and Red Bull Advanced Technologies will be a fascinating experience for everyone involved. Unconstrained by F1TM regulations, we have a unique chance to create a car in its most efficient form that will represent the ultimate fusion of art and technology.”

The designer of ten World Championship winning F1 cars, Adrian Newey, revealed that: “From the age of six I have had two goals in life – to be involved in the design of racing cars, and to be involved in the design of a supercar. Whilst the former ambition went on to form my career to date, the latter has always bubbled away, resulting in countless sketches and doodles over the years. The opportunity to now develop and realize those ideas whilst working with Marek and his colleagues from Aston Martin is tremendously exciting. It allows us to translate the technology we have developed in F1TM into a new arena.” Without revealing details, the single sketch is all we have to go on

Styling will doubtless be heavily influenced by Newey’s 30 years of F1 aerodynamics knowledge, while speaking with Auto Express, Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer said the hypercar will be more focused on being quick around a track than trying to beat the Bugatti Chiron in a drag race. As well as being "spectacularly beautiful" and roadworthy, the hypercar will have the ability to lap a circuit as quick as an F1 or LMP1 racecar. Power is likely to come from Aston's new V12 combined with an F1-style KERS hybrid system. Aston’s hypercar will be ready for launch in 2018. Expect a price tag in the region of $3 million, and a 100-unit limited run production



http://www.carbuzz.com/news/2016/3/.../17/Aston-Martin-Teams-Up-With-Red-Bull-To-Build-Cutting-Edge-Hypercar-7732553/

 

A "spectacularly beautiful" road car that is as quick around a circuit as an LMP1 racing car?
I don't think so.

 

Well if anybody can do it, surely Newey? If they incorporate radical active aero and perhaps active ride height, I could see how a somewhat curvy shape could be retained.

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I think we all remember what happened when the executive of one hypercar manufacturer made some outrageous and inplausible claims about his company's upcoming car...

 

I wouldn't count Newey out...

There are already modified tin tops running F3 laptimes while being on non-slicks. With true top level underbody setups and a larger surface area to work with compared to said tin tops, and a full carbon chassis, I can see an unrestricted car getting close to lmp1 times.

The car will essentially be a mid engine Vulcan-class car with 200 more horsepower and four to five times the downforce

 

The most obvious challenge of any road car trying to approach F1 level performance around a track is the Center of Gravity.

A road car has a much higher CoG than an F1 car (or other race car) and that has a huge negative impact on cornering performance. The road car must have a higher CoG because it has to deal with the realities of uneven pavement on public roads, unlike smooth pavement of an F1 racetrack.

Then there are the tires. Obviously street legal tires are far less sticky than race car tires that only have to last a few hundred km. Another big performance disadvantage.

Also, the driver of a road car must be able to see more than a few metres around his car, so there would necessarily be aerodynamic design compromises in a road car that wouldn't be necessary in a race car.

So, if any designer could overcome these (and many other) built in performance disadvantages inherent in a road car, why wouldn't he apply this "secret sauce" to an existing F1 car and thereby make it go even faster than it can go now?

 

Simply because they are banned in Motorsport competition/f1.

Many many aerodynamic concepts that simply are not allowed to be used in F1.

There are road based time attack cars with more than double the downforce of f1 cars. They still meet your visibility requirement.

Tires are easy, select mpsc2 for road and something really sticky for the track.

Ride height can be adjusted with active aero/magnetic or hydraulic suspension. Also easy.

 

Not so easy - or it would have been done already. Lets put things in perspective by using Laferrari (Ferrari's ultimate hypercar with plenty of F1 engineering in the background) as an example.

LaFerrari holds the Fiorano test track for production road cars with a time of 1.19.70 minutes. The F1 car record set by Michael Schumacher is approx 56 seconds. That is well over 20 seconds faster IN ONE LAP. Within 6 laps, the F1 car would be lapping LaFerrari.

The P1, 918 and LaFerrari would likely be very similar in lap times based on existing tests. So we can say that the collective engineering brilliance (and financial might) of Ferrari, Porsche and McLaren can produce road cars that can get to a barely sub 1.20 time.

Now we are being told that Aston Martin, with limited financial resources, is going to build a hypercar that will absolutely obliterate the existing three hypercars with a sub one minute lap time capability at Fiorona.

So there are two possibilities:
1. Someone at Aston Martin is, to put it mildly, exaggerating the performance potential of this car, or
2. Aston Martin has the capability of building such a car, in which case the entire engineering depts of Ferrari, Porsche and McLaren should be summarily fired for incompetence given the much larger budgets they were provided to design such (comparatively) slow cars.

I know which one of these possibilities I believe.

 

At the race this weekend there was a lot of speculation that there might be more to this venture. We know Red Bull using the Renault block and making their own labeled engines. Talk is Aston Martin be in some way the supplier of F1 engines to their team next year. Just a rumor but stranger things have happened.

 

Yes, in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of Formula One anything is possible, but I cannot imagine how it could make any sense for AM to become an F1 engine supplier.
- Aston Martin have no in-house engine making expertise or capability, and have not done for many years.
- Not long ago AM signed a long-term contract with Mercedes to use Merc engines in all AM production road cars for the foreseeable future.
- As part of that contract Merc took an equity stake in AM.
- As we all know, the Merc engine is currently dominant in F1.
- Aston Martin has no real money. Prior to the announcement of the Merc equity investment, people were wondering how AM would be able to pay for development of their next model

At the same time, despite wanting a "performance" image, Merc have never done a limited edition "hypercar", unless one counts the CLK-GTR which is literally the worst road car I have been in in my life, and of which it took the Mercedes global sales network 6 years to sell 25 units.

For those reasons, to me at least it seems much more likely that the Newey/Aston project would have Merc power, and that any "Aston Martin" engine in F1 would be such in name only.

 

This is a drawing of the rumored Adrian Newey Aston Martin hyper car. If they build this it would be great. I wonder if Mercedes Benz would build the power plant for it since they have a 10% interest.

 

That's a drawing for their VGT car that became the DP100.

 

There was a documentary on Adrian Newey a year or so back in which he mentioned his dream of the "ultimate road car"
He actually showed a 3D printed model of it
It wasn't the "free form F1 car" posted in the car buzz link above nor was it like the blue vanquishised 177 above.
I suspect this "deal" is written around realising that model, it will be interesting to see what engine goes in to it and what influence Marek Reichman has over Adrian Newey!

 

I like the Aston Martin brand and think that their design language is gorgeous. I hope they can figure it out and make it work. I'll be very interested to see how this all works out.

 

difficult to believe that they would design and build a car with F1 performance and the benefits of a road car for a tiny fraction of the cost of the F1 car..

development costs would be substantial..... the sound from the stereo in an F1 car is freakin' terrible and the cupholders next to non existant... these are serious problems that need to be overcome in a high performance road car..

 

The main issues are power, weight, tyres and aero. I don't think anyone would doubt any of these companies could configure a chassis with the necessary handling requirements to do a super (I.e race car) quick lap.

Power, not too difficult to achieve enough of that but the problem becomes weight. However, with turbos that might allow a small block, high power unit - lower weight. The carbon tub, as we know, has good weight properties. Then it's just a matter of how far towards 'stripped out' they want to go. Low volume does hamper development ability but high price helps in terms of expensive (and potentially lightweight) materials. So, I could believe the lightweight box could be ticked.

Tyres, well, slap on a set of slicks and I don't think anyone would really complain - for any sensible professional to claim you can match race car pace without race car rubber is obviously nonsense. So, if the Aston hyper car used slicks and matched LMP pace, that would still be seriously impressive in my book. Let's face it, any owner could do the same thing for track use.

That leaves what I reckon is the hard bit. Aero. The problem is providing enough aero while keeping the good looks that would surely be a requirement for an Aston hyper car. Take a bow Mr. Newey. Perhaps he is the ace up the sleeve and I could imagine him relishing just such a challenge, where there is very little restriction on the technology behind a solution, as was his issue with F1.

Can they do it? Yes, I reckon, but the cost will be high and to fully achieve that target they might discover that the concessions to comfort might be too much for the kind of people that buy these things.

Best guess? If a hypothetical LMP lap time was 1m 30s, they might get to 1m 35s with the final product. So, pretty close but the cigar stays in the pocket.

 

errm
it won't happen lukey.. they would do well to even get close to GT3 pace.. I would say 5 seconds off gt3 pace is doable, which is considerably quicker than the current trinity.. and roughly 35 seconds slower than f1 around for example spa

afterall, lmp and f1 cars are single seat.. one assumes this road car will be two seat.. that in the first instance is a huge hindrance ..

the claim is just not credible but fun marketing and at least provides an interesting debate.

having said that if it even remotely resembled the sketch that has been put out, which the well informed suggest is an exisiting aston project, I would try and get one in a heart beat.. !

 

I cant help but think of the X2010 fan car that Newey designed for GT game series when I read about this upcoming effort with Aston Martin. That was his take on an F1 car without the rules. Obviously it was ridiculously faster than an F1 car in the game but he did say at the time he would like to do something like that in real life. If this is it and he is partnering with AM to design and execute something as radical as the X2010, X2011 & X2014 then I can see it being as fast or faster than an F1 car on track but not sold on any car being that fast being a road car.

But since I'm reading that he wants it to be a road car, with road car compromises etc there is no way I can see that kind of car being anywhere near as fast as an F1 car. The proposed car will have to be supremely featherweight compared to the average hyper car, probably have fans for suction a la X2010 etc cars he designed in game and have an extremely non conventional super/hypercar body etc. But Im no engineer. If he can pull those huge claims off without the car looking like an open wheeler etc (Caparo T1 comes to mind) then he will be immortalized.

Here is a non-working real life mock up of the fan car X2010 that he built in game with ideas of building a real life functioning model. The G's alone a car like this would pull would mean the driver would have to don a G-suit and train like a fighter pilot. I don't think we have the technology to achieve a car like the X2010 in real life yet.

 

It is very possible to have a road car configuration with over 3 times the downforce of something like a 650S GT3 race car. Like I said before, there are modified tin tops that are making even more than that. And they obviously have the ability to put in another seat for a passenger.

Newey is one of the few I would trust to be able to really use underbody aero to its maximum potential. Andrew Brilliant would be another.

Right off the bat, a flat underbody is already deficient to an optimum configuration.

I would fully expect the Aston hypercar to be bigger than the 650S GT3, solely to obtain even more underbody surface area to play with.

 

I would fully expect the Aston hypercar to be bigger than the 650S GT3, solely to obtain even more underbody surface area to play with.

Fair enough, but a car that is 2 metres wide, which includes modern McLarens, Ferraris, Veyron, 918, K'egg and the rest, is already at the limit of what is tolerable for driving on the public roads.

So unless the idea is to make 100 garage queens....oh, wait....

 

The idea would be to make 100 track queens that happen to be road legal, imo

 

They've just done that twice in the last year with the Vulcan and GT12
I'd hope they would make more of Adrain Newey's input
I'm expecting a hybrid 177 replacement

 

How is the Vulcan by the way since it was mentioned. I've seen a few in videos but no comparisons to other track only cars.

 

If you can put license plates on a Radical RXC coupe, then why are we holding Aston and Newey to a higher standard of road car usability? Is it because they said the word 'beautiful'? Granted, the Radical coupe is about the ugliest thing you'd ever want to see cruising down your residential street.

Big power, optional slicks for the track, sucker fan, patent from No Lotus for his retractable side skirts, job done. Who needs cup holders? Seriously.

 

I think there are a few issues entailed in holding AM/Newey to the higher standard of which you speak.

If all Newey did was to design an LMP1 car without the restrictions of real LMP1 - weight, movable aero, engine size, fuel economy, whatever - then we would expect it as a matter of course to be faster than real LMP1. To take that vehicle, to add a horn and indicator lights and thus to contrive in some jurisdictions for it to be road-legal, would be no big deal.

To a lower spec and at lower ultimate pace, that is what the Radical is, which is why nobody is hugely impressed with it. Yes it is fast, but no it is not anything special. It did not move the game forward an inch.

ISTM that the crucial distinction is between a road car that is very fast on track and a very fast track car that on the rare occasion might be driven on the road. The former is a massive challenge, the latter just a matter of a few modifications.

 

I would love to hear Mr Glinkenhaus' opinion on this topic, he would be one of the most qualified members on this board to give an expert opinion. So I will ask him.

Jim,
Do you think it is currently possible to develop a road going hypercar that can lap a track as quickly as an F1 car? What are the biggest challenges?

 

You can essentially make a significantly modernized/updated car in the light of a 962 Schuppan. Wide and long, but not much (if at all) bigger than a current Koenigsegg. Full underbody tunnels, active aero, active suspension, big power.

 

Just a thought. Jon olsson had a rebellion made which resembled an lmp1 car for gumball 3000. What is the possibility of taking Aston's lmp1 car from a few years ago develope it to modern standards and use the new engines from Mercedes as a power unit. Turn up the boost and make the interior something that resembles an Aston. They wouldn't have to have any power restrictions that the FIA have in place. That is the only possible way they could get near f1 pace with a road car imo

 

Just a thought. Jon olsson had a radical which resembled an lmp1 car for gumball 3000. What is the possibility of taking Aston's lmp1 car from a few years ago develope it to modern standards and use the new engines from Mercedes as a power unit. Turn up the boost and make the interior something that resembles an Aston. They wouldn't have to have any power restrictions that the FIA have in place. That is the only possible way they could get near f1 pace with a road car imo

Interesting idea, but I think the point of this exercise is that the car will be an all-new, unique and futuristic design from the famous drawing board of Adrian Newey.

 

Interesting discussion. I take the point about how much money Aston will earn, and therefore what is available for development, however, your maths ignore the fact that far fewer cars need to be made. This can change a number of things. Of course, the amount of raw materials required, but also the manufacturing and supplier techniques needed (conformity of production is a very key issue for manufacturers and the higher the production level the harder, and more expensive, this is). Therefore, I suspect, for the sake of argument, that Aston will not really be 'money' restricted, especially since they have a technology transfer deal with AMG and they can charge almost what they like with such a small production run.

No, I suspect the restraining factors will be how much Aston will allow Newey 'carte blanche' when it comes to how to make this car go fast, assuming there is a trade-off between track speed and comfort, even assuming that Newey can raise the equilibrium point that other design teams may work to.

If we assume that their claimed target is not marketing hyperbole and that it has been set as a real challenge, the sort of thing they would probably need to do to engage Newey, then perhaps we should try and think how it could be done if we first assume it will be done (which, admittedly, requires huge benefit of the doubt).

We all know the reasons it is difficult (like, no one has ever done it before) but this seems just the sort of thing that would energise a brilliant designer who has had the career and background of Adrian Newey.

People said that a 4 minute mile was impossible, but once Roger Bannister did it, many more followed within months of his feat. Why? Because they now believed. The real genius was Bannister's, because he believed before it could be seen. I reckon Newey might have this sort of mindset. Although it is still more likely to be marketing nonsense, I admit.

If it could be done, it would have to involve ride height, moveable aero (because otherwise it could not provide both beauty and downforce I suspect) and light weight. This light weight would need to include provision for a powerful engine too - at least 900-1,000 bhp.

So, from what we know here (pretty informed forum) what sort of power, weight and downforce combinations would get them to their target?

For instance, would 1,200 kg, 750 kg downforce at 200 Km/h and 900 bhp do it with properly sized wheels/slick tyre specification?

 

Interesting discussion. I take the point about how much money Aston will earn, and therefore what is available for development, however, your maths ignore the fact that far fewer cars need to be made. This can change a number of things. Of course, the amount of raw materials required, but also the manufacturing and supplier techniques needed (conformity of production is a very key issue for manufacturers and the higher the production level the harder, and more expensive, this is). Therefore, I suspect, for the sake of argument, that Aston will not really be 'money' restricted, especially since they have a technology transfer deal with AMG and they can charge almost what they like with such a small production run.

Yours are good points.

I think on this forum, perhaps two months ago, someone with more knowledge than I said that for McLaren the marginal cost of building a P1 was, IIRC, 25-30% of the total cost ascribed to each car (the remainder being allocated fixed costs and profit). Whatever the % is, it's going to vary: having gone down the learning curve, the time required to build the last one would have been quite a bit less than the time required to build the first one.

Putting to one side the learning curve effect, I should think that the cost of parts and assembly per unit would have to be higher for the mooted AM/Newey machine than they were for the P1. If they are going to charge more than double the price of a P1, the build quality should be presumed to be somewhat better. The P1's build quality is quite good, but it is not perfect. Also, there is quite a bit of commonality with other McLarens, which I don't think AM could get away with on the Newey car - even if they could do it technically, I think marketing reasons would make it infeasible.

The standout feature of a Veyron is not its top speed, nor its technology. The standout feature is its build quality, which is stunning. Like the car or not, the Veyron looks like it is worth the money. AM is proposing a car that would cost more than twice what a Veyron cost; for that money, it is going to have to be bloody well made, and that level of craftsmanship is expensive to achieve.

AM is going to have to start from scratch for a chassis. Okay, Newey can design a chassis in his sleep, but getting one that works as a road car, both technically (weather seals, visibility, ingress/egress, HVAC) and sufficient for all the regulatory approvals they would need will be a different matter entirely. Gordon Murray, like Newey, had never designed a road car before the F1, but during that process he learned to his frustration that it's not as easy as it looks.

My guess is that designing the chassis will be a very extensive and expensive project - again, if one assumes that this is going to be a genuine road car available for sale in the major markets around the world, not a BAC Mono- or Radical-type thing. They are both fine cars, but not true road cars.

Drivetrain? Do Mercedes currently do anything that might suit? Maybe they could detune an F1 engine, or use a variant of their DTM V8, although either would be insufficient without supplementation.

What is an acceptable service interval for the drivetrain internals on a road car? I'm not sure what it is, but it's not something ridiculous such as 1-2,000 mi. I would have thought 10,000 mi as an absolute minimum.

I think it would be great if AM/Newey could come up with a genuine successor to the McLaren F1, which really was a road car. I am just sceptical that they can manage that, especially if Aston will be funding it on its own. With a subsidy, such as what VW gave to the Veyron or McLaren Formula One gave to the F1, it might be possible.

 

1200kg weight instantly kills any chance of your prospective car being quicker than a F1 car which have way higher downforce to weight ratios.

 

Why only 750 kg downforce at 200 kph? No aero rules should easily get to 1100-1200 kg downforce at that speed

 

One thing is for sure: it's going to get very interesting.

 

Nobody mentioned power to weight yet

F1 is better than one to one.

So better than the Koeniggsegg one to one therefore.

And let's be honest the 1:1 isn't in the league of the trinity. Although am sure it could be.

But then even with power to weight of one to one were literally miles off.

Then just look at the frontal profile of an f1 or lmp1 against a road car. Possible I guess the passenger could sit behind the driver but that's going to be an uncomfortable experience to say the least.

We can assume that the wheels will be faired in unless Aston Martin decide to produce a caterham or caparo lookalike which we can assume is unlikely.

So going to be 1200 kg probably needs in excess of 1400 BhP. More to the point those kinda engines last what 600 miles before complete strip down and refurb and Rev over 12000 Rpm. How are we going to get 1400 BhP from 9000 rpm say in an engine that doesn't weigh more than Saturn?

Let's mention frontal area again just for good measure. .

 

Nobody mentioned power to weight yet

F1 is better than one to one.

So better than the Koeniggsegg one to one therefore.

And let's be honest the 1:1 isn't in the league of the trinity. Although am sure it could be.

But then even with power to weight of one to one were literally miles off.

Then just look at the frontal profile of an f1 or lmp1 against a road car. Possible I guess the passenger could sit behind the driver but that's going to be an uncomfortable experience to say the least.

We can assume that the wheels will be faired in unless Aston Martin decide to produce a caterham or caparo lookalike which we can assume is unlikely.

So going to be 1200 kg probably needs in excess of 1400 BhP. More to the point those kinda engines last what 600 miles before complete strip down and refurb and Rev over 12000 Rpm. How are we going to get 1400 BhP from 9000 rpm say in an engine that doesn't way more than Saturn?

Let's mention frontal area again just for good measure. .

As a slightly more modest reference point, can we imagine a current LMP1 car being completely deregulated, with the addition of fully active aero and ground effect, active suspension, no fuel or electrical energy restrictions, and on slicks, being an order of magnitude faster around a circuit that a standard LMP1 car is? I think we can.

LMP1 cars have carbon-carbon brakes, which have yet to be proved feasible for road cars. Going to a carbon-ceramic system for the road is going to add about 20kg, plus the apparatus for servo assistance.

Then we would have to add adjustable ride height. Further, I believe that air bags and side impact protection would be obligatory; you can get by without them and still be road-registered in the UK, but I don't think that is possible in other big markets such as the US, the Continent and China.

Adding the weight of the brakes would take away some of the advantage of the hypothetical unregulated LMP1 over the actual LMP1, but my guess is that still the former would be the quicker car. Also, we could remove the real LMP1's air-jack system, which is fairly heavy. Whether to remove the LMP1's roll cage would be a judgment call, but certainly the loss of its weight would also help.

All told, I think it is quite feasible for an LMP1-like car to be made road-legal and, without FIA regulatory constraints, to be faster than its racing car origins.

Whether such a car could be made faster than an F1 car is another question.

Whether such a car could honestly be described as a "road car" would be a question beyond that.

 

Yes passenger behind the driver. Faired wheels not a disadvantage re lmp these days. And who cares about the engine rebuild, at the price surely it will be included in the maintenance package.

What else you got?

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