Simply Abu Dhabi XXVII

2 0 0 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I A drian Newey is a guy who is obsessed with design, particularly when it comes to fast cars. His career has centred almost entirely around building ground-breaking Formula One and IndyCars. And while most people know his F1 history, he initially achieved success in the US by designing the 1985 Indy500-winning March of Danny Sullivan and the IndyCar champion’s car of Al Unser in the same year. Back in Europe, Newey designed the 1991 F1 World Championship-winning Williams Renault FW14 of Riccardo Patrese and the 1998 McLaren MP4/13 of Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard before joining Red Bull Racing. In 2010, Newey’s Red Bull RB6 won nine races and the Driver’s title for Sebastian Vettel, along with the Constructor’s Championship for Red Bull. From that point until 2014, no other designer’s car won either of the championships. Feeling that the changing F1 regulations were holding back his creative freedom, Newey stepped away from the racing side of Red Bull in 2015 to focus on another exciting project: an all-out, no holds-barred supercar for the street. Without the tightly governed rules of racing to adhere to, arguably the greatest aerodynamicist of our time was free to build whatever he liked and it was at this point where Aston Martin joined forces with Red Bull to turn his dream into reality. Working under the code name of AM-RB 001, the Aston Martin Valkyrie had a mandate to deliver extreme F1-like levels of performance while maintaining GT comfort. “I’d long harboured the desire to design a road car,” Newey said. “The formation of Red Bull Advanced Technologies brought me a step closer to realising that ambition, but I believed we should work with an automotive manufacturer and Aston Martin was at the top of my list. “I’ve always been adamant that the AM-RB 001 should be a true road car that’s also capable of extreme performance on track and this means it really has to be a car of two characters. That’s the secret we’ve put into this car – the technology that allows it to be docile and comfortable but with immense outright capabilities,” he added. The key signature details of any Newey-designed race car is that nothing is there unless it has a job to perform and that every external component also has to double up to undertake some kind of aero role. It’s safe to say that nothing has changed just because this is a road car. Technically it’s a two seater, but a snug cabin at that, with room for two 98th percentile adults. However, Aston’s design chief Marek Reichmann is pretty tall at just under six foot five and it was imperative that he was comfortable, so there’s at least plenty of head and shoulder room in its teardrop-shaped cockpit. AstonMartin Valkyrie By Damien Reid