Adrian Newey is one of the most famous engineers in all of the world. The man behind some of the most successful F1 cars ever, he was on hand at the Goodwood Festival of Speed to debut the Red Bull RB17, a 1,200 horsepower slot car from Red Bull Advanced Technologies that was designed under Newey and will cost about $7.5 million a pop. What does one drive to the debut of their own wild hypercar? The other wild hypercar they built.
The Aston Martin Valkyrie was a $3.4 million tie-up between Aston Martin and Red Bull, with numerous similarities to the RB17, including a high-revving Cosworth-sourced engine, hybrid powertrain, extreme aerodynamics, and an almost impossibly small cockpit. It is the first car not from a partnership.
There are a few differences, however, including the fact that the RB17 is decidedly track-only. Unless you’re the big cheese in some sultanate, you can only drive an RB17 on private roads. The sold-out Valkyrie, however, is a little different. It was designed and built for the road, featuring some delightful details like a legally required CHIMSL (safety light) that’s only large enough to fit the CE (Certified in Europe) logo and a front badge that’s extraordinarily thin (40 microns thick) and made out of aluminum.
As one of the designers of the car, Newey scored his own version of the car and decided to drive it to Goodwood. This isn’t a huge surprise as one of the pastimes of the Goodwood Festival of Speed is to show up in the wildest car imaginable. There were rare Zagato twin-tails, steam-powered trucks, and even a turbo diesel Chrysler Voyager. Cars you’d only expect to see in your dreams, driven on Southern England roads.
Newey’s Valkyrie was legit dirty. Road-crusted. A work of art that’s somehow more real because it’s been covered in street grime and not, as supercars are at most events of this type, waxed to a degree usually reserved for Only Fans. That’s not the Goodwood spirit. This isn’t a place for trailer queens.
“This really defines Goodwood… get your supercar dirty,” Beau said, as he nibbled his delicious ice cream in front of Newey’s car. (Side note: The other thing that defines Goodwood is a preponderance of establishments selling ice cream. There are three ice cream trucks/stalls/gelaterias for every person. It’s still cold here!)
But all those road-driven super/hyper/sports cars are usually parked in the tony Ton Club parking area, the supercar paddock, or even in the Red Bull paddock. Newey didn’t park in any of those places. Nope. According to witnesses, he literally just drove his exceedingly rare, barely road-legal Aston right up to a wide spot of sidewalk in front of the Singer display and the Veuve Clicquot tent.
He then tossed a parking pass on the planchette-sized dash and walked to the press conference with Gordon Ramsey, Christian Horner, and hundreds of rabid fans.
That is remarkable. So far as I could tell, he had the normal gate access pass that we had for our Renault van. There are approximately as many security guards as there are ice cream shacks and none of them are too impressed by most vehicles, almost gleefully stopping Ferraris and telling them to turnaround.
That Newey was able to just casually park in front of a bunch of paid stands with nothing more than a hastily placed gate pass and assume that his car wouldn’t get messed with was quite impressive and goes to show just how much status you get when your cars when 14 world championships.
It doesn’t hurt that the car is spectacular.