Aston Martin working on McLaren P1 rival

Aston Martin is working alongside the Red Bull F1 team on a mid-engined rival to the McLaren P1 dubbed the “brother of Valkyrie”.

The car’s development has been confirmed by Aston Martin’s chief executive Andy Palmer, who explained to Autocar that the Newport Pagnell based firm has “more than one mid-engined project underway, more than two if you count the Valkyrie.

“This new project will draw on all the know-how we’ve taken from the Valkyrie, as well as some of its visual identity and engineering capability, and bring it to a new sector of the market.”

The car is aimed at establishing a new performance benchmark for hypercars in the £1m price bracket in around 2021, ahead of any of the established marques re-entering  the market. The project has been made possible by the success of Aston Martin’s initial collaboration with the Red Bull team. The first product of this tie-up, the Valkyrie, has been met with great excitement and demand, and has, along with its track-only AMR spin-off, sold out despite its 2019 delivery date and £2-£3m price tag.

The continuation of the tie-up with Red Bull also lays the foundation for a much longer, closer partnership than originally expected. “We are laying down some pretty deep roots with Red Bull, said Palmer. “It’s a base that will be known as our Performance Design and Engineering Centre and that gives the perfect clues as to the kind of projects that will be developed there. Perhaps the biggest indications of our intentions is that our office is next door to Adrian [Newey’s]”