The RB 17: Unraveling the Mysteries of Downforce and Aerodynamics

As we delve into the world of high-performance vehicles, one question that often arises is how do certain cars achieve their exceptional downforce levels? The Red Bull Racing (RB) 17, a track-only car designed for F1-level performance, has piqued our interest with its intriguing aerodynamic characteristics. Let's take a closer look at the RB 17 and explore why it remains flat after reaching a certain speed.

Notice how both curves in question are increasing with respect to velocity squared. This indicates that they're curving up as you get to higher speeds, revealing the car's trajectory. The RB 17 seems to stop right at 160 kmph, despite having 1700 kg of downforce. To understand why it remains flat after this point, we need to consider the limitations imposed by the tires.

Red Bull actually limits the down force of the RB 17 above 160 km per hour. They're utilizing active aerodynamics to bleed off downforce as speed increases, ensuring a perfectly flat level of downforce beyond that point. This approach allows the car to maintain its stability and grip on the track. However, it's essential to recognize that this limitation is primarily due to the tires' load capacity. As we'll explore later, tires dictate everything when it comes to downforce; once you reach the load capacity of the tires, you can't increase downforce any further.

The RB 17 has an impressive 875 kg car plus 1700 kg of downforce, totaling 2575 kg. This weight is distributed across four tires, with approximately 1545 kg on the rear axle or 77.5 kg per tire. Assuming a 60% front-rear weight distribution and matching aerodynamics for a well-balanced vehicle, we arrive at this calculation. A maximum of 1700 lb per tire seems to be the upper limit due to tire limitations.

The tires used in the Aston Martin Valkyrie have a load index of 99, indicating their carrying capacity is exactly 1700 lb – a match for our calculated value. This suggests that the RB 17's downforce levels off at this point because its tires are likely rated for 1700 lb. In contrast, the Ford Maverick's tires have a higher rated capacity, with some models even exceeding 1874 lb.

A final aspect to consider is the aerodynamic efficiency of the RB 17. Adrien Née notes that an F1 car has a downforce-to-drag ratio of about 3:1 to 4:1. This indicates the balance between generating downforce and minimizing drag, which is crucial for efficient performance. In contrast, LMP cars are significantly more aerodynamically efficient, with ratios ranging from 6:1 to 7:1. The RB 17's ratio of 16:1 demonstrates its exceptional aerodynamic capabilities.

However, there's one significant drawback to the RB 17: it will only have 50 units produced, and they'll come at a staggering $8 million price tag. This makes it inaccessible to all but the most dedicated F1 enthusiasts. Despite being track-only, we're left wondering why Red Bull would opt for this approach.

One possible explanation lies in road legality. By setting a tire limit of 1700 kg, Red Bull might be ensuring that the car complies with regulations and can potentially be driven on public roads. After all, what's the point of having an F1-level car if it can't be enjoyed outside of the track? While this seems counterintuitive, it could be a deliberate design choice to maintain some semblance of practicality.

Ultimately, we're left with more questions than answers about the RB 17's aerodynamic secrets. Will road legality play a role in its development, or will the car remain a mystery for now? As we continue to unravel the mysteries of this exceptional vehicle, one thing is certain: the world of high-performance cars is full of intriguing trade-offs and compromises that often go unseen by the general public.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwho is the greatest designer in the history of Formula 1 if you ask an F1 nerd Adrien ne's name undoubtedly will come up again and again and again throughout his career 12 newly designed cars have won the constructor's World Championship in Formula 1 all of this is to say the dude knows race cars and it's been a dream of his since he was a kid to not only design race cars but also design a superar and here here it is the Aston Martin Valkyrie wait shoot this is supposed to be about the new Red Bull RB 17 sorry this is awkward you see Aston Martin Red Bull Racing used to be an F1 team so this partnership made a lot of sense Adrien newie could take all of the knowledge he'd learned from the decades he spent in Formula 1 and through Aston Martin facilitate the production of an absolutely Extreme Road car realizing his childhood dream well Aston Martin didn't just want to be a title sponsor in Formula 1 they wanted their own car so they broke up with Red Bull and in 2021 birthed the Aston Martin F1 team okay so that means Adrien newie is working for the Red Bull F1 team while his dreamed up Road car is for a competing Formula 1 Team all right a little awkward but this is no problem because Red Bull Racing is led by CEO Christian Herer and if there's one thing this guy's good at it's it's preventing awkward situations um yeah so my my script it says to just pause here for dramatic effect so Christian Unleashed Adrien to create that childhood dream car basically a card that could match the speed of Formula 1 and here it is the Red Bull rb1 17 this is not at all related to the Aston Martin Valkyrie which is obvious when looking at them again here we have the RB 17 and here we have the Aston Martin Valkyrie wait I think I said that wrong sorry this is the rb7 and this is the valkyrie like I was saying they're clearly not related but there are very legitimate reasons to be excited about the RB 17 remember that Christian Herer guy that I said was good at preventing awkward situations well he had a few words to share about the relationship with Aston Martin as it relates to the production of The Valkyrie quote with Valkyrie working with the manufacturer there was constant compromise and constant talk of budget that brings up another thing Christian her's really good at ignoring budgets oh my catering has arrived wow would you look at that I love Arby's but in this case it's absolutely a win because it set Adrien newie free to design the car he's always wanted to and what perfect timing because Adrien newie is leaving Red Bull and it gets better because the New York Times is reporting he could end up on another F1 team quote with Aston Martin understood to be leading the chase to secure his Services upon his departure from Red Bull what we have come full triangle summarizing so far Red Bull Aston Martin Adrien newie spicy love triangle but here's why this is actually really cool Red Bull's Formula 1 cars are restricted by by the rule set they can only be as fast as the rules allow road cars are restricted by the rules of road cars while it's far less restrictive than the rules of say Formula 1 it's still very restrictive the rb1 17 has no rules it's a trackon car so Adrien newie is completely Unleashed to create whatever his heart desires now before we get into the engineering let's discuss the name Red Bull have a very clever naming system RB as in Red Bull and then the number starting with one so you have the rb1 rb2 rb3 you get it all the way up to the rb16 which was used in the 2020 season well in 2020 Co hits there's chaos everywhere and Red Bull like many of us forgets how to count so they call the 20201 car the rb1 16b and they call the 2022 car the rb8 18 so there never was an RB 17 until now all right so if there's no rules what's the goal and what are the limitations for this vehicle well Adrien wanted to create a two-seater that could match the speeds of Formula 1 cars so as far as the rules for this car it needs to fit two people it needs to be safe and it needs to be ridiculously fast well it turns out the limiting factor on speed comes down to the tires I don't know how many times I need to say it but once again tires are the most important part of your car when it comes to Performance and that is the case here as well as the load rating of the tires limits how much downforce you can have and how much downforce you have ultimately is going to determine how fast you can go around a track so there's four topics I'd like to discuss that are fascinating about this vehicle first the engine second the hybrid system chill out it's actually really cool third the weight and finally the aerodynamics and I promise I'll sneak in tires somewhere so let's start with the engine it's a naturally aspirated 4.5 L V10 producing 1,000 horsepower by revving to 15,000 RPM that's 4,000 RPM higher than the Mercedes amg1 which is an engine based entirely on an F1 powertrain now like the Aston Martin Valkyrie this engine is built by cos worth so we've got the valkyrie we've got the Gordon Murray t50 we've got the Bugatti turbon and now the rb17 all coming with Cosworth power plants now I don't know if Adrien newie is the ignition behind this trend of high revving naturally aspirated Cosworth engines going into hypercars since this all started with the valkyrie but if he is hats off now all of these engines are super impressive but consider this the Bugatti turbon engine makes about 120 horsepower per liter that number jumps to 154 horsepower per liter for the valkyrie Gordon Murray takes it even higher to 166 horsepower per liter but none of this compares to the rb7 at 222 horsepower per liter in a naturally aspirated engine what now this is of course because power is a function of RPM and this engine revs insanely High much higher than these other Cosworth engines so that also means it will have a very short stroke I'm guessing the stroke will be a little over 50 mm with a bore of around 105 mm for reference the current F1 engines have a stroke of 53 mm and a boore of 80 mm so a similar stroke and a similar Red Line though F1 engines are significantly smaller and of course turbocharged now we don't know how much torque it has and we don't know at what RPM it makes Peak power so worst case if it were to make Peak power at 15,000 RPM it would have at least 350 lb feet of torque though I suspect the peak torque number will probably be around 400 plus pound feet based on what we've seen from other Cosworth engines and that torque will be boosted further by an electric motor which brings us to our next subject the hybrid system now on a true purists racing machine you might argue naturally aspirated combustion should be the only power source wow look at you stuck in your ways such a shame you haven't discover the joy that is electric lawn equipment seriously this stuff is game changing okay focus we're here to talk about the RB 17 and there are very good reasons for the hybrid system if you're going to add weight you really want to add as many benefits as possible and that's exactly what they've done so yes you're adding an electric motor and a battery but this electric motor replaces the need for a starter plus an alternator so that's reducing the weight penalty from a performance standpoint it gives you torque fill so you can bump up the torque curve especially in areas where you don't have the engine Peak Performance like at lower RPM and it gives you another 200 horsepower bringing the cars total to 1,200 horsepower so it seems quite Justified but there's another very clever benefit this Electric motor offers to help understand this let's look at the Mercedes amg1 as an example in an interview with Top Gear Mercedes explained the biggest challenge with the amg1 engine was actually just getting it to appropriately idle they wanted a smooth idle at 1200 RPM while the engine was derived from an F1 engine that idled at 5,000 RPM a huge difference now I don't know what RPM this RB 17 engine is going to idle at but it's revving about twice as high as many road carss so the engine isn't going to be super stoked about a really low RPM to understand why this is a problem we're going to need a very specialized tool but no problem I've got my toolbox right here so just need to rumage through really quick and F no that's not it on uh hold on one one second sorry about this I'm sure it's in here somewhere uh let's see hold all I think I oh there it is there it is here we are ah yes the Whiteboard all right so let's understand the problem so say we have a vehicle that is currently not moving so the rear wheels are at 0 mph our engine is simply idling at 1,000 RPM very typical engine idle speed and that engine is connected to the transmission with a clutch or a torque converter so the clutch is what is going to allow for slip between these two until you can get that tire speed up high enough that you can fully engage that clutch and you no longer have to allow for slip once it gets to that engine idle speed so at what speed will an engine RPM of 1,000 with these given gear ratios need to be driving at in order for that clutch to fully engage so if you do the math and you have an engine idle speed of 1,000 RPM and you fully engage that clutch you can find that the rear wheels are going to be rotating pushing your vehicle forward at 6 mph now what if your engine idle speed was 5 th000 RPM well that would multiply this number by five meaning in order to get your vehicle at engine idle speed it need to be traveling at 30 mph so you'd have a ton of clutch slip obviously that's not ideal how do you get around it well you could use an absurdly high gear ratio but then you're going to have a complicated really large gear set in order to make that work so what's the solution well the Aston Martin Valkyrie actually already solved this problem before putting the engine into gear you use the electric motor to accelerate the vehicle up to about 15 mph you already have your engine now at a happy RPM and once the vehicle speed is up you can engage the engine and you don't have a need for a ridiculously short first gear on the RB 17 we don't know what vehicle speed the engine will engage at but Nei says it will be a slightly higher speed than the valkyrie okay so you've eliminated the need for first gear and you can use the electric motor for reverse so you've eliminated two gears again helping to offset the weight penalty of this hybrid system so there are plenty of good reasons to include it but how heavy is all of this well that brings us to weight 875 kg for those of you who live in the United States that is just under the weight of an American Bison the largest mammal in North America that is Lotus Elise like weight but with 1,200 horsepower basically 1 kilowatt of power for every kilogram of mass which is a better power to weight ratio than modern F1 cars absolutely nuts so if you've been staying up at night because you really just want to know if this thing will accelerate quickly relax easy everything's going to be okay yes it's going to be very fast you know what else makes a sh sound um aerodynamics Segways let's talk Arrow first of all Adrien neie says the RB 17 will be able to lap Silverstone a popular F1 circuit as quickly as a modern F1 car now that's insane the reason why F1 cars are so fast around a track is because they have huge amounts of downforce so how much downforce does the RB 17 have 1,700 kg nearly twice the weight of the vehicle meaning it should be able to Corner around 3 to Four G's but F1 cars can generate about 3 to four t times the weight of the car in downforce about 3,000 kg with an 800 kg vehicle so they can Corner even faster okay but wait if an F1 car weighs a lot less but generates way more downforce how would the RB 17 be just as fast around a track great question it's all about at what speed that downforce is generated the RB 17 is able to create way more downforce at lower vehicle speeds so there's two elements I want to talk about that help enable this first the rb7 has an enormous diffuser it makes up nearly the entire length of the car the car is basically just a diffuser with a V10 strap to it Formula 1 cars follow very strict rules regarding diffusers so the size of what's used on the RB 17 would never be allowed in F1 but in addition to the diffuser you're also going to have two fans so these fans can help boost your downforce numbers when you're at lower vehicle speeds and you don't have sufficient air flow to create good downforce so what are the numbers well Mercedes says a modern F1 car generates as much downforce as it weighs in other words about 800 kg at about 150 kmph Red Bull's technical director Rob gray says the RB 17 will generate 1,700 kg of downforce at just 160 km per hour so again it's generating way more downforce at lower speeds than an F1 car c good all right I think we need the Whiteboard again okay so here we're looking at downforce versus vehicle speed and we're comparing the RB 17 to an F1 car and as you can see on these lower speeds below you know 200 km per hour or so the RB 17 is actually going to have significantly more downforce than the F1 car so if a track is designed so that the speeds are on this lower end rather than on this higher end you'll see the RB 17 is going to have more down force and therefore it's going to be the quicker car around that track now you do have to take into consideration vehicle weight but essentially that's going to remain true for how this graph looks on the lower speeds the RB 17 is going to be quicker at much higher speeds you know 225 km hour and greater than the F1 car is going to be faster now you'll notice both of these curves here are increasing with respect to Velocity squared so you can see they're curving up as you get to higher speeds but the RB 17 just stops right at 160 kmph at 1700 kg of downforce and then it just flatlines there so instead of continuing that trajectory why does it remain flat after that well Red Bull actually limits the down force of the RB 17 above 160 km per hour so they're using active aerodynamics to bleed off down Force as speed increases so that you have a perfectly flat level of downforce if you didn't reduce the downforce by using those active flaps that trajectory would continue and you'd see that the RB 17 would have more downforce than an F1 car at any vehicle speed so why did they Flatline the downforce at 1700 kg tires haven't you been listening tires dictate everything once you reach the load capacity of the tires you can't increase down Force any further so that's where it levels off at now I was curious so I did a little math okay so we have an 875 kg car plus 1700 kg of downforce that's 2575 kg total resting on the four tires since this is a mid-engine vehicle let's assume a 4060 front rear weight distribution meaning 60% of the weight on the rear tires of the car and we'll also assume the aerodynamics match for a well balanced vehicle 60% of 2575 gives us 1,545 Kg on the rear axle or divide by 2 7 7 72.5 kg per tire or about 1,700 lb per tire okay so a maximum of 1,700 lb per tire well I looked up the tires that the Aston Martin Valkyrie runs which have a load index of 99 which means their carrying capacity is 1,79 lb in other words exactly what we just calculated so that's why the downforce levels off at 1,700 kg because the tires are likely rated for 1,700 lb okay and not to brag but the tires on my Ford Maverick are rated for 1,874 lb significantly more than the valkyrie at a much lower rated speed okay but one final fun fact regarding the aerodynamics of the RB 17 Adrien neie says that an F1 car has a downforce to drag ratio of about 3:1 to 4:1 this is a way of comparing aerodynamic efficiency so down force is good pushing the car into the ground so that it has more grip drag is bad right it requires power to overcome it's trying to slow the vehicle down so the higher the downforce to drag ratio the better Nei says LMP cars are significantly more aerodynamically efficient than F1 cars with a downforce to drag ratio of around 6:1 or 7:1 the RB 17 will have a ratio of 16 to1 so extremely aerodynamically efficient how well again it's about the diffuser diffusers are very aerodynamically efficient so you can create a lot of down Force without much drag now I do have to mention one pretty big drawback to this vehicle there's only going to be 50 made and they're going to cost about $8 million now I don't have a problem with that I'm more of a cross Trek guy and RB 17 was never in the cards but it's track only I think a big part of the joy of this thing was going to be the ability to have have F1 level performance in a car that could legally drive down the road if you're going to spend $8 million on a track car well no your friend can't ride along but you could just go buy an actual F1 car but the track only thing leaves me very perplexed let me explain why I get that downforce has to level off at 1,700 kg because that's the TIR Max load rating but who says you have to use tires that meet the rules of road tires I mean Formula 1 tires can handle even higher loads so why not use something like that the only logical explanation in my mind is that at some point there had to be some desire for this thing to be road legal because why play by the rules of the road if it's a track only car so I'm very curious to see where the production version ends up or if Road legality is somehow in the cards I don't know I don't know I don't know why it's Tire limited if it doesn't have to be so I'll end the video there which is kind of an important life lesson is it not if you can't figure something out give up call it quits stop babbling end the video if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below thanks for watchingwho is the greatest designer in the history of Formula 1 if you ask an F1 nerd Adrien ne's name undoubtedly will come up again and again and again throughout his career 12 newly designed cars have won the constructor's World Championship in Formula 1 all of this is to say the dude knows race cars and it's been a dream of his since he was a kid to not only design race cars but also design a superar and here here it is the Aston Martin Valkyrie wait shoot this is supposed to be about the new Red Bull RB 17 sorry this is awkward you see Aston Martin Red Bull Racing used to be an F1 team so this partnership made a lot of sense Adrien newie could take all of the knowledge he'd learned from the decades he spent in Formula 1 and through Aston Martin facilitate the production of an absolutely Extreme Road car realizing his childhood dream well Aston Martin didn't just want to be a title sponsor in Formula 1 they wanted their own car so they broke up with Red Bull and in 2021 birthed the Aston Martin F1 team okay so that means Adrien newie is working for the Red Bull F1 team while his dreamed up Road car is for a competing Formula 1 Team all right a little awkward but this is no problem because Red Bull Racing is led by CEO Christian Herer and if there's one thing this guy's good at it's it's preventing awkward situations um yeah so my my script it says to just pause here for dramatic effect so Christian Unleashed Adrien to create that childhood dream car basically a card that could match the speed of Formula 1 and here it is the Red Bull rb1 17 this is not at all related to the Aston Martin Valkyrie which is obvious when looking at them again here we have the RB 17 and here we have the Aston Martin Valkyrie wait I think I said that wrong sorry this is the rb7 and this is the valkyrie like I was saying they're clearly not related but there are very legitimate reasons to be excited about the RB 17 remember that Christian Herer guy that I said was good at preventing awkward situations well he had a few words to share about the relationship with Aston Martin as it relates to the production of The Valkyrie quote with Valkyrie working with the manufacturer there was constant compromise and constant talk of budget that brings up another thing Christian her's really good at ignoring budgets oh my catering has arrived wow would you look at that I love Arby's but in this case it's absolutely a win because it set Adrien newie free to design the car he's always wanted to and what perfect timing because Adrien newie is leaving Red Bull and it gets better because the New York Times is reporting he could end up on another F1 team quote with Aston Martin understood to be leading the chase to secure his Services upon his departure from Red Bull what we have come full triangle summarizing so far Red Bull Aston Martin Adrien newie spicy love triangle but here's why this is actually really cool Red Bull's Formula 1 cars are restricted by by the rule set they can only be as fast as the rules allow road cars are restricted by the rules of road cars while it's far less restrictive than the rules of say Formula 1 it's still very restrictive the rb1 17 has no rules it's a trackon car so Adrien newie is completely Unleashed to create whatever his heart desires now before we get into the engineering let's discuss the name Red Bull have a very clever naming system RB as in Red Bull and then the number starting with one so you have the rb1 rb2 rb3 you get it all the way up to the rb16 which was used in the 2020 season well in 2020 Co hits there's chaos everywhere and Red Bull like many of us forgets how to count so they call the 20201 car the rb1 16b and they call the 2022 car the rb8 18 so there never was an RB 17 until now all right so if there's no rules what's the goal and what are the limitations for this vehicle well Adrien wanted to create a two-seater that could match the speeds of Formula 1 cars so as far as the rules for this car it needs to fit two people it needs to be safe and it needs to be ridiculously fast well it turns out the limiting factor on speed comes down to the tires I don't know how many times I need to say it but once again tires are the most important part of your car when it comes to Performance and that is the case here as well as the load rating of the tires limits how much downforce you can have and how much downforce you have ultimately is going to determine how fast you can go around a track so there's four topics I'd like to discuss that are fascinating about this vehicle first the engine second the hybrid system chill out it's actually really cool third the weight and finally the aerodynamics and I promise I'll sneak in tires somewhere so let's start with the engine it's a naturally aspirated 4.5 L V10 producing 1,000 horsepower by revving to 15,000 RPM that's 4,000 RPM higher than the Mercedes amg1 which is an engine based entirely on an F1 powertrain now like the Aston Martin Valkyrie this engine is built by cos worth so we've got the valkyrie we've got the Gordon Murray t50 we've got the Bugatti turbon and now the rb17 all coming with Cosworth power plants now I don't know if Adrien newie is the ignition behind this trend of high revving naturally aspirated Cosworth engines going into hypercars since this all started with the valkyrie but if he is hats off now all of these engines are super impressive but consider this the Bugatti turbon engine makes about 120 horsepower per liter that number jumps to 154 horsepower per liter for the valkyrie Gordon Murray takes it even higher to 166 horsepower per liter but none of this compares to the rb7 at 222 horsepower per liter in a naturally aspirated engine what now this is of course because power is a function of RPM and this engine revs insanely High much higher than these other Cosworth engines so that also means it will have a very short stroke I'm guessing the stroke will be a little over 50 mm with a bore of around 105 mm for reference the current F1 engines have a stroke of 53 mm and a boore of 80 mm so a similar stroke and a similar Red Line though F1 engines are significantly smaller and of course turbocharged now we don't know how much torque it has and we don't know at what RPM it makes Peak power so worst case if it were to make Peak power at 15,000 RPM it would have at least 350 lb feet of torque though I suspect the peak torque number will probably be around 400 plus pound feet based on what we've seen from other Cosworth engines and that torque will be boosted further by an electric motor which brings us to our next subject the hybrid system now on a true purists racing machine you might argue naturally aspirated combustion should be the only power source wow look at you stuck in your ways such a shame you haven't discover the joy that is electric lawn equipment seriously this stuff is game changing okay focus we're here to talk about the RB 17 and there are very good reasons for the hybrid system if you're going to add weight you really want to add as many benefits as possible and that's exactly what they've done so yes you're adding an electric motor and a battery but this electric motor replaces the need for a starter plus an alternator so that's reducing the weight penalty from a performance standpoint it gives you torque fill so you can bump up the torque curve especially in areas where you don't have the engine Peak Performance like at lower RPM and it gives you another 200 horsepower bringing the cars total to 1,200 horsepower so it seems quite Justified but there's another very clever benefit this Electric motor offers to help understand this let's look at the Mercedes amg1 as an example in an interview with Top Gear Mercedes explained the biggest challenge with the amg1 engine was actually just getting it to appropriately idle they wanted a smooth idle at 1200 RPM while the engine was derived from an F1 engine that idled at 5,000 RPM a huge difference now I don't know what RPM this RB 17 engine is going to idle at but it's revving about twice as high as many road carss so the engine isn't going to be super stoked about a really low RPM to understand why this is a problem we're going to need a very specialized tool but no problem I've got my toolbox right here so just need to rumage through really quick and F no that's not it on uh hold on one one second sorry about this I'm sure it's in here somewhere uh let's see hold all I think I oh there it is there it is here we are ah yes the Whiteboard all right so let's understand the problem so say we have a vehicle that is currently not moving so the rear wheels are at 0 mph our engine is simply idling at 1,000 RPM very typical engine idle speed and that engine is connected to the transmission with a clutch or a torque converter so the clutch is what is going to allow for slip between these two until you can get that tire speed up high enough that you can fully engage that clutch and you no longer have to allow for slip once it gets to that engine idle speed so at what speed will an engine RPM of 1,000 with these given gear ratios need to be driving at in order for that clutch to fully engage so if you do the math and you have an engine idle speed of 1,000 RPM and you fully engage that clutch you can find that the rear wheels are going to be rotating pushing your vehicle forward at 6 mph now what if your engine idle speed was 5 th000 RPM well that would multiply this number by five meaning in order to get your vehicle at engine idle speed it need to be traveling at 30 mph so you'd have a ton of clutch slip obviously that's not ideal how do you get around it well you could use an absurdly high gear ratio but then you're going to have a complicated really large gear set in order to make that work so what's the solution well the Aston Martin Valkyrie actually already solved this problem before putting the engine into gear you use the electric motor to accelerate the vehicle up to about 15 mph you already have your engine now at a happy RPM and once the vehicle speed is up you can engage the engine and you don't have a need for a ridiculously short first gear on the RB 17 we don't know what vehicle speed the engine will engage at but Nei says it will be a slightly higher speed than the valkyrie okay so you've eliminated the need for first gear and you can use the electric motor for reverse so you've eliminated two gears again helping to offset the weight penalty of this hybrid system so there are plenty of good reasons to include it but how heavy is all of this well that brings us to weight 875 kg for those of you who live in the United States that is just under the weight of an American Bison the largest mammal in North America that is Lotus Elise like weight but with 1,200 horsepower basically 1 kilowatt of power for every kilogram of mass which is a better power to weight ratio than modern F1 cars absolutely nuts so if you've been staying up at night because you really just want to know if this thing will accelerate quickly relax easy everything's going to be okay yes it's going to be very fast you know what else makes a sh sound um aerodynamics Segways let's talk Arrow first of all Adrien neie says the RB 17 will be able to lap Silverstone a popular F1 circuit as quickly as a modern F1 car now that's insane the reason why F1 cars are so fast around a track is because they have huge amounts of downforce so how much downforce does the RB 17 have 1,700 kg nearly twice the weight of the vehicle meaning it should be able to Corner around 3 to Four G's but F1 cars can generate about 3 to four t times the weight of the car in downforce about 3,000 kg with an 800 kg vehicle so they can Corner even faster okay but wait if an F1 car weighs a lot less but generates way more downforce how would the RB 17 be just as fast around a track great question it's all about at what speed that downforce is generated the RB 17 is able to create way more downforce at lower vehicle speeds so there's two elements I want to talk about that help enable this first the rb7 has an enormous diffuser it makes up nearly the entire length of the car the car is basically just a diffuser with a V10 strap to it Formula 1 cars follow very strict rules regarding diffusers so the size of what's used on the RB 17 would never be allowed in F1 but in addition to the diffuser you're also going to have two fans so these fans can help boost your downforce numbers when you're at lower vehicle speeds and you don't have sufficient air flow to create good downforce so what are the numbers well Mercedes says a modern F1 car generates as much downforce as it weighs in other words about 800 kg at about 150 kmph Red Bull's technical director Rob gray says the RB 17 will generate 1,700 kg of downforce at just 160 km per hour so again it's generating way more downforce at lower speeds than an F1 car c good all right I think we need the Whiteboard again okay so here we're looking at downforce versus vehicle speed and we're comparing the RB 17 to an F1 car and as you can see on these lower speeds below you know 200 km per hour or so the RB 17 is actually going to have significantly more downforce than the F1 car so if a track is designed so that the speeds are on this lower end rather than on this higher end you'll see the RB 17 is going to have more down force and therefore it's going to be the quicker car around that track now you do have to take into consideration vehicle weight but essentially that's going to remain true for how this graph looks on the lower speeds the RB 17 is going to be quicker at much higher speeds you know 225 km hour and greater than the F1 car is going to be faster now you'll notice both of these curves here are increasing with respect to Velocity squared so you can see they're curving up as you get to higher speeds but the RB 17 just stops right at 160 kmph at 1700 kg of downforce and then it just flatlines there so instead of continuing that trajectory why does it remain flat after that well Red Bull actually limits the down force of the RB 17 above 160 km per hour so they're using active aerodynamics to bleed off down Force as speed increases so that you have a perfectly flat level of downforce if you didn't reduce the downforce by using those active flaps that trajectory would continue and you'd see that the RB 17 would have more downforce than an F1 car at any vehicle speed so why did they Flatline the downforce at 1700 kg tires haven't you been listening tires dictate everything once you reach the load capacity of the tires you can't increase down Force any further so that's where it levels off at now I was curious so I did a little math okay so we have an 875 kg car plus 1700 kg of downforce that's 2575 kg total resting on the four tires since this is a mid-engine vehicle let's assume a 4060 front rear weight distribution meaning 60% of the weight on the rear tires of the car and we'll also assume the aerodynamics match for a well balanced vehicle 60% of 2575 gives us 1,545 Kg on the rear axle or divide by 2 7 7 72.5 kg per tire or about 1,700 lb per tire okay so a maximum of 1,700 lb per tire well I looked up the tires that the Aston Martin Valkyrie runs which have a load index of 99 which means their carrying capacity is 1,79 lb in other words exactly what we just calculated so that's why the downforce levels off at 1,700 kg because the tires are likely rated for 1,700 lb okay and not to brag but the tires on my Ford Maverick are rated for 1,874 lb significantly more than the valkyrie at a much lower rated speed okay but one final fun fact regarding the aerodynamics of the RB 17 Adrien neie says that an F1 car has a downforce to drag ratio of about 3:1 to 4:1 this is a way of comparing aerodynamic efficiency so down force is good pushing the car into the ground so that it has more grip drag is bad right it requires power to overcome it's trying to slow the vehicle down so the higher the downforce to drag ratio the better Nei says LMP cars are significantly more aerodynamically efficient than F1 cars with a downforce to drag ratio of around 6:1 or 7:1 the RB 17 will have a ratio of 16 to1 so extremely aerodynamically efficient how well again it's about the diffuser diffusers are very aerodynamically efficient so you can create a lot of down Force without much drag now I do have to mention one pretty big drawback to this vehicle there's only going to be 50 made and they're going to cost about $8 million now I don't have a problem with that I'm more of a cross Trek guy and RB 17 was never in the cards but it's track only I think a big part of the joy of this thing was going to be the ability to have have F1 level performance in a car that could legally drive down the road if you're going to spend $8 million on a track car well no your friend can't ride along but you could just go buy an actual F1 car but the track only thing leaves me very perplexed let me explain why I get that downforce has to level off at 1,700 kg because that's the TIR Max load rating but who says you have to use tires that meet the rules of road tires I mean Formula 1 tires can handle even higher loads so why not use something like that the only logical explanation in my mind is that at some point there had to be some desire for this thing to be road legal because why play by the rules of the road if it's a track only car so I'm very curious to see where the production version ends up or if Road legality is somehow in the cards I don't know I don't know I don't know why it's Tire limited if it doesn't have to be so I'll end the video there which is kind of an important life lesson is it not if you can't figure something out give up call it quits stop babbling end the video if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below thanks for watching\n"