Asked if the RB17 was the first step towards Red Bull becoming a fully fledged road car manufacturer, Horner said: “It’s the start of a journey. It’s an interesting starting point for us. You can never say ‘never’, but certainly this is a halo project for us.”
As the most innovative F1 designer of his generation, one with 10 constructor championship titles across three teams to his name, Newey introduced various novelties to the sport.
Asked if the RB17 will feature Newey specialities such as a ‘blown diffuser’, Gray said: “We internally sometimes refer to [the RB17] as ‘Adrian’s greatest hits’. There’s a lot of things that people will recognise… He’s constantly innovated on [this] vehicle and he’s involved in pretty much every aspect of design and engineering.
“Everyone looks at Adrian as an aerodynamicist by trade, but he’s also involved in everything from wheels, tyres, suspension, brakes, all the way through to engine.”
In a subsequent interview Newey expanded on the list, telling Autocar, “It will be a skirted car, so flexible skirts – because we can – and clearly large ground effect tunnels, active suspension as it could be driven on circuits that aren’t as smooth as [F1 tracks] and we’re trying to avoid having very stiff suspension.“It will also have exhaust blowing, all the tricks that we’ve learned [in F1], in other words.”