There are a few problems with the Red Bull RB17: It costs £5 million ($6.5 million), it's sold out, and it can't be driven on public roads. However, the 50 customers who had the money and bought the car quickly will be able to fix that last issue. Courtesy of Lanzante, the Cosworth-powered machine is getting a street-legal conversion.
That's right—the British company behind the road-going McLaren P1 GTR will give the RB17 a license plate as well. A spokesperson told Top Gear magazine that future owners of the Red Bull hypercar have already expressed interest in paying extra to use the mid-engine beast outside of a race track. As you can imagine, making it comply with road car regulations won't be cheap. It's going to cost as much as £500,000 ($650,000), about 10 percent of the car's original price.
Knowing Lanzante's modus operandi, the experts will do their best to keep the street-legal RB17 as close to the original as possible. Given the crazy aerodynamics and low-slung nature of the Red Bull hypercar, it won't be easy to turn this circuit monster into a road-going vehicle. It's worth noting that the P1 GTR isn't the only track car converted for street use by the company. One of the five Pagani Zonda Revolucion units received the same treatment and attended last year's Goodwood Festival of Speed.
The street-legal RB17 is likely to gain some weight on top of the impressively low 1,984 pounds of the track version. The Red Bull hypercar is not only lighter than a Mazda MX-5 Miata ND, but it's also nearly seven times more powerful. With over 1,200 hp on tap, this latest car for the one-percenter is about a second quicker at Silverstone than an F1 car—at least according to recent simulation testing.
Aerodynamics is likely to be negatively impacted by the addition of side mirrors, so don't expect the street version to generate the 3,747 pounds of downforce promised for the standard RB17. We'll have to wait and see whether there will be any changes to that glorious V-10.
In stock form, the naturally aspirated 4.5-liter engine sends 1,000 hp to the rear wheels and revs to 15,000 rpm. The other 200 horses come from an electric motor built into the carbon fiber gearbox. The transmission doesn't have a reverse gear since that's taken care of by the electric motor. With the combined power, Adrian Newey's slippery mid-engine track star tops out at 217 mph.
It'll be a while before we’ll see the first Red Bull RB17 modified by Lanzante since production of the standard hypercar won’t start until later in 2025. The conversion process is likely to take many months. In the case of the road-legal Porsche 935 shown at last week's Goodwood Festival of Speed, it took Lanzante about 18 months of development to convert two cars for road use.
