Aston Martin teams with Red Bull Racing on radical hypercar

By Stephen Edelstein March 17, 2016

Aston Martin AM-RB 001 teaser

What happens when a famous carmaker and championship-winning race team join forces? Great things, apparently. Aston Martin and Formula One team Red Bull Racing are now collaborating, with a brand-new hypercar as part of the deal.

Called the AM-RB 001, the car will be designed by Red Bull Chief Technical Officer Adrian Newey, who created all of the team’s winning F1 cars, and Aston design chief Marek Reichman, who’s hot off the DB11 that debuted earlier this month at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show. There’s no timeline for when the AM-RB 001 will arrive, but hopefully Aston and Red Bull will have picked a better name by the time it does.

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There are no details on the car yet other than a teaser image, which suggests a shape influenced either by current race-car designs, or some type of squid. It’s possible that the AM-RB 001 will only be a concept car, but a production version would be a suitable followup to Aston’s previous One-77 and (track-only) Vulcan flagships.

The AM-RB 001 will be the most visible aspect of a partnership between Aston and Red Bull. Aston hopes the association will raise its profile, and will apply its logos to Red Bull’s RB12 Formula One cars for the 2016 season. Red Bull recently severed ties with Renault, which previously had an extensive technical partnership with the team that it used to promote Infiniti, the luxury brand of sister company Nissan.

Although it won’t supply engines or participate much in the team’s operations like Renault did, the AM-RB 001 plans mean Aston’s association with Red Bull could be more substantive on the production-car side. Besides stunts like naming former driver Sebastian Vettel “Director of Performance,” there was never much cross pollination between Red Bull and Infiniti.

An Aston Martin-Red Bull has been whispered about since last summer. Some F1 watchers believe the partnership is part of attempt by Red Bull to acquire Mercedes-Benz engines. Mercedes already has an agreement with Aston to collaborate on the British firm’s sports cars, and its engines are currently dominating F1. Red Bull still uses Renault engines, but has actively sough to switch because it believes they’re inferior.

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