Red Bull RB17

[bucker]

What if, because of cost cap Red Bull can't pay all employees as they were paying years ago and those kind of projects are something to keep employees.

[Andi76]

But anyway - nothing of this matters - you cannot carry over Aerodynamics or other research from a road or a track car or however you want to call it, to your F1 car. Also not the mechanical components as the loads and g-forces are totally different. So sorry - but thats just rubbish.

If you say so. You'd better tell the team that too - they have said it will complement their F1 car work. You'd best inform Newey that he's wasting his time after all.

So they admitted that they will cheat? In public? Have you never thought about that "complement their F1 car work" means something totally different than you think it does?

Neither the team nor Newey have to be informed, as the meaning is not what you make out of it. This car is a "Hypercar" that uses ground effect. With active-suspension and moveable skirts and a V-8 Engine. And ground effect is the only thing that this car has in common with Red Bulls F1 car. Thats it. Everything else is completely different, even the aerodynamics itself and you can use nothing for F1. Think about it and you will realise that.

[Remevs]

Given how neigh on impossible to just pick up a design from another F1 car made under the same regulations and build it into your car cuz of flow structures and aero philosophy, it will just be a waist of money to build a car on with a totally different purpose and function and try to use it as a development bed for F1. Unless the rb17 is a 1 to 1 replica of the rb18 it can't be used as a development bed or test bed

[Just_a_fan]

I think the point being missed is about the resources restrictions imposed by the cost cap. Run a programme that is "not F1" and you can do what you like e.g. CFD a front wing. The programme is "commercially sensitive" and the FIA can go and whistle if they want to look at it.

It's not "design a car and then use it to test things for F1", it's "build a department outside of the control of the FIA and then use its resources how you see fit".

[Cs98]

I think the point being missed is about the resources restrictions imposed by the cost cap. Run a programme that is "not F1" and you can do what you like e.g. CFD a front wing. The programme is "commercially sensitive" and the FIA can go and whistle if they want to look at it.

It's not "design a car and then use it to test things for F1", it's "build a department outside of the control of the FIA and then use its resources how you see fit".

Red Bull already have a department outside of F1 working on various high performance vehicles and solutions, it's called Red Bull Advanced Technologies, who will now also be designing and building this car. I doubt the RB17 will have much relevance for the F1 department in terms of aero considering how sensitive and specific F1 aerodynamics are. I'd say your best bet to circumvent F1 testing limitations would be through the drivetrain, a la Merc AMG One. But seems like RB opted for a V8 here which doesn't make sense if that was your goal.

My hunch is this is for a couple of reasons. A, the hypercar market is booming and they see an opportunity to sell a ridiculously expensive car that will no doubt be sold out, which will also be great marketing for the RB brand. B, Adrian Newey obviously like to design things outside the constraints of F1 and this is a way to keep him happy and make a buck doing so. C, the cost cap has caused a lot of redundancies in the F1 business so they can shuffle those talented people to another project within the RB family where they can still be useful and make money for RB, rather than let them go completely.

[SiLo]

No idea how the FIA would police it, it sounds basically impossible.

Send a team to design a car that is similar to an F1 car, then after 12 months they leave that company and come and work in the new one with all of these new ideas.

Or, just employ them as consultants.

Amazed this wasn't setup BEFORE the 2022 season to be honest, but I assume there must be some kind of FIA oversight to stop it because it seems almost too simple and easy to circumvent the cost cap in that way.

[Sieper]

At McLaren they have been doing this for years, they even had the audacity to call the car Mclaren F1. Cheeky devils

[vorticism]

I wonder if they will go single seater. The Valkyrie was commissioned by an established manufacturer likely requesting two seats. RB making track focused offerings wouldn't necessarily need to. BAC Mono. This might also give them a LMH offering considering AM did not enter the Valkyrie. Visualization of single seater Valkyrie below.



If other teams take this 'advanced projects' route, you might end up with numerous SOTA circuit racers in private hands which then get raced in special exhibitions, eventually organizing into a new motorsport. Might take a decade or two.

[carisi2k]

My feeling on this car is that Red Bull should have just made it a WEC Hypercar project instead of some production car like the Valkyrie.

[chrisc90]

Since it seems to be causing some rumour amongst other team threads......Does anyone know what this actually looks like?
I have a feeling judging by the art concept drawings it will be a little larger than the Valkyrie. Certainly cant see it being a open wheel car.

[LM10]

My feeling on this car is that Red Bull should have just made it a WEC Hypercar project instead of some production car like the Valkyrie.

A WEC Hypercar needs to be built around regulations while a production car doesn’t. The engineers can build the production car completely to their liking and then share their knowledge and experience with the F1 engineers. The FIA can tackle this problem as much as they wish, they will never be able to entirely stop knowledge share. The engineers can meet up in a bar and talk about the advantages/disadvantages of certain parts/developments while sipping on their brandy.

[Willy]

What if, because of cost cap Red Bull can't pay all employees as they were paying years ago and those kind of projects are something to keep employees.

It applies to all three teams. Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes. The headache must have been higher for Mercedes as they had the highest spending, followed by Ferrari and then Red Bull, previous to cost cap regulations. Neither of them did mass layoffs, so that makes me wonder how they managed the situation.

I am sure each of them found respective loop holes that they have exploited to retain resources like for RB17, Mercedes Project One etc.

[BlueCheetah66]

What if, because of cost cap Red Bull can't pay all employees as they were paying years ago and those kind of projects are something to keep employees.

It applies to all three teams. Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes. The headache must have been higher for Mercedes as they had the highest spending, followed by Ferrari and then Red Bull, previous to cost cap regulations. Neither of them did mass layoffs, so that makes me wonder how they managed the situation.

I am sure each of them found respective loop holes that they have exploited to retain resources like for RB17, Mercedes Project One etc.

Not very on topic but Ferrari and Red Bull were able to pass on some some employees to Haas and Alpha Tauri respectively aswell as moving them on to other projects like the RB17 and the Ferrari LMH program. Curious to see what Mercedes did because the Project One was basically all done before the costcap

[Just_a_fan]

What if, because of cost cap Red Bull can't pay all employees as they were paying years ago and those kind of projects are something to keep employees.

It applies to all three teams. Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes. The headache must have been higher for Mercedes as they had the highest spending, followed by Ferrari and then Red Bull, previous to cost cap regulations. Neither of them did mass layoffs, so that makes me wonder how they managed the situation.

I am sure each of them found respective loop holes that they have exploited to retain resources like for RB17, Mercedes Project One etc.

Project One predates the cost cap and isn't of an aero type relevant to the current F1 rule set. Mercedes also lost a good number of personnel to other teams, such as Red Bull. You might remember Horner crowing about it at the time. "Poaching" I think he called it.

Ferrari entered LMP - great way to find work for staff. And being as LMP is a particular rule set that doesn't really interact with F1's rule set, it's less likely to be able to use ideas across the two.

RB17 is a track-day special that doesn't have to abide by any rules other than decibel levels. So they can do whatever they want with it in terms of aero.

So which one is the most likely to be useful as a side-hustle to cheat the resource limitations? The latter one, that's which.

[LM10]

I wonder if people actually think that RedBull have started the RB17 project just for fun and not primarily because it absolutely helps them in the current F1 rule set with the budget cap. It’s not a bold allegation, it’s reality. How naive one must be to believe that RedBull do not benefit from that?