Valkyrie [Official] Aston Martin - From AM-RB 001 to Valkyrie
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The Aston Martin Valkyrie (also known by its code-names as AM-RB 001 and Nebula) is a limited production hybrid sports car collaboratively built by Aston Martin, Red Bull Racing Advanced Technologies, and several other parties. Production: November 2021 – December 2024.
manuelf
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Wasn't the statement about LMP2 speed regarding Valkyrie with street legal tires?
But @StartYourEngines referred to a statement about Valkyries performance with full racing slicks ...
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Correct! They claim it is as fast as LMP2 with Cup 2 tyres. It will also be possible to deliver with Cup 2 “R” and then it will obviously be even faster....
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It's going to depend on tyres and which circuits. Last time I fingered an F1 tyre, it hadn't even been on the car yet and it was literally sticky, I really don't see it doing it if it's not on F1 grade rubber.
As for the track, the Valkyrie should be making its downforce with a lot less drag, it's heavier, but more powerful, so it's going to be fast in different places to an F1 car. Putting it round Monza is going to be a different case to putting it around Silverstone or Singapore, for example.
Claims about it being x% faster or slower than a racing car really aren't that black and white IMHO.
As for the track, the Valkyrie should be making its downforce with a lot less drag, it's heavier, but more powerful, so it's going to be fast in different places to an F1 car. Putting it round Monza is going to be a different case to putting it around Silverstone or Singapore, for example.
Claims about it being x% faster or slower than a racing car really aren't that black and white IMHO.
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As Matski says it will depend on which circuit it is, but I dont believe Valkyrie will be faster (yes Aston claim it will be faster) than a LMP2 on any circuit on Cup 2 tyres. And neither will it be nearly as fast as a F1 on slicks IMO.
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As a grade 1 circuit, at 7km Spa is the longest circuit we're every likely to see comparative times at.
LMP2 has ~600hp and draggy aero-downforce and already on slicks achieves 122s @ Spa with a Vmax of ~305km/h. Valkyrie has ~1100hp and will have a way better downforce/drag ratio, and has a ~400km/h top speed (call it ~350km/h without too much time to reach it).
To me, that's enough to increase the average lap time by the 37km/h or so required to save that 20s per lap. Would a change to F1 grade rubber be enough to unlock this? Perhaps, as I've said before it probably can't use its 1100hp as effectively on road tyres, all the apex speeds will be higher, the braking distances will be waaaaay shorter.
... I won't make a full on prediction, but I could see it. As I said earlier in the thread, even around a shorter track such as Silverstone, a GT3 car with 43% LESS power is 10 seconds FASTER than a 790hp McLaren Senna thanks to it's race tyres. A BTCC car with ~360hp is as fast around the track as the LaF/918/P1 that have 2.5× the power, thanks to it's (weight) and race tyres... The Valkyrie has 55% MORE power than LMP2... it doesn't seem so far fetched that tyres could unlock 20 seconds.
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Further to the above ... F.P.M. time...
The tyres of a 740kg car doing 190mph around an 130m radius corner (i.e. an F1 car at 130R @ Suzuka) need to overcome >41kN of of centripetal force in order for the car to stay planted. Assuming a Lift/Drag ratio of 2.5:1, and a CdA of 1.1 for the car, it would be generating about 1238kg of downforce... plus its mass of 740kg.. so 1978kg or 19.4kN of normal force.... F=µN suggests that 41kN/19.4kN would give a coefficient of friction of 2.11 for the tyres required to hold the car on the road.
If we assumed that a standard car road tyre would have half the grip (say µ = 1ish, seems to be suggested online), the same car, with the same parametres, would be travelling at ~100mph, before the centripetal force overcame the friction force at the lesser road tyres, and the car slid off the track. Effectively, I'm saying an F1 car would get around 130R at about 100mph if it were on road tyres.
Now, this is Fag-Packet Maths, and I'm not an expert, so please correct me if you know better... but this does suggest a significant potential difference in grip available between the two types of tyre manifesting itself as a 90% increase in corner speed (extreme example obviously as it's one of F1's most demanding corners). But, as I said above, to get from LMP2 to F1 speeds needs only 22mph increase in average speed across a 7km lap of Spa. In context, this translates to the Valkyrie having a lift/drag ratio of 3.75 (from the F1's est. 2.5), and weighing 1000kg, assuming the same 2.11 µ value for the tyres, and assuming it has the same CdA of 1.1 as the F1 car. (i.e. less draggy but bigger frontal area).
... m'eh ...
I'm overthinking it now. It'll be interesting to see what it does anyway.
The tyres of a 740kg car doing 190mph around an 130m radius corner (i.e. an F1 car at 130R @ Suzuka) need to overcome >41kN of of centripetal force in order for the car to stay planted. Assuming a Lift/Drag ratio of 2.5:1, and a CdA of 1.1 for the car, it would be generating about 1238kg of downforce... plus its mass of 740kg.. so 1978kg or 19.4kN of normal force.... F=µN suggests that 41kN/19.4kN would give a coefficient of friction of 2.11 for the tyres required to hold the car on the road.
If we assumed that a standard car road tyre would have half the grip (say µ = 1ish, seems to be suggested online), the same car, with the same parametres, would be travelling at ~100mph, before the centripetal force overcame the friction force at the lesser road tyres, and the car slid off the track. Effectively, I'm saying an F1 car would get around 130R at about 100mph if it were on road tyres.
Now, this is Fag-Packet Maths, and I'm not an expert, so please correct me if you know better... but this does suggest a significant potential difference in grip available between the two types of tyre manifesting itself as a 90% increase in corner speed (extreme example obviously as it's one of F1's most demanding corners). But, as I said above, to get from LMP2 to F1 speeds needs only 22mph increase in average speed across a 7km lap of Spa. In context, this translates to the Valkyrie having a lift/drag ratio of 3.75 (from the F1's est. 2.5), and weighing 1000kg, assuming the same 2.11 µ value for the tyres, and assuming it has the same CdA of 1.1 as the F1 car. (i.e. less draggy but bigger frontal area).
... m'eh ...
I'm overthinking it now. It'll be interesting to see what it does anyway.
Bridster
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This is how the Silverstone lap times would look, using the info from the Rosberg video:
Valkyrie AMR Pro - 1:23.208 - 105%
F1 - 1:27.369 - 100%
Valkyrie (Track Pack, LRH, Slicks) 1:30.070 - 97%
Valkyrie - (Low Ride Height, Slicks) 1:31.970 - 95%
LMP1 - 1:36.015 - 91.00%
Valkyrie (Low Ride Height) - 1:38.970 - 88.28%
LMP2 - 1:40.948 - 86.55%
LMGTE Pro - 1:54.171 - 76.52%
LMGTE Am - 1:56.034 - 75.30%
GT3 - 2:02.687 - 71.21%
Senna - 2:09.277 - 67.58%
Normally, slicks - when compared to top street legal tires like Trofeo Rs or Cup 2s - are about 2-3s per minute faster, depending on exactly what slick tire you are running and what circuit you are on. Which, incidentally, also means that the Senna still wouldn't quite be able to match a GT3 car
. Perhaps the difference is bigger when very high levels of downforce are present, but provisionally I put the non-slick Valkyrie at being 7s slower. Which would roughly match the "faster than LMP2 on Cup2s" claim.
However, do I think that a car sold to customers will actually be this fast? Not really.
One thing I haven't seen anyone really talk about yet is suspension. Yet it is with suspension that race cars gain a major advantage over any road car - and it is an advantage that you can't simply make up without making the road car undrivable. For example:
Normal cars use something called the Ackermann steering geometry, which basically means that when cornering the inner tire is set to turn slightly more than the outside tire, so that the tires don't slip when having to cover slightly different distances during the turn. However, for complicated reasons having to with slip angles and tire contact patches, racing cars can choose to employ anti-Ackermann geometry to maximize grip on fast circuits. This is something that a road car could never do because doing so actually decreases grip in slower corners, it would destroy tires immediately and it would lead to very bad handling.
To manipulate the size of the tire contact patch during hard cornering, racing cars run a lot of negative camber. Again, on a road car you don't really wanna do dial too much because it results in excessive tire wear and bad handling on any road that isn't completely flat.
Most racing cars have zero KPI to gain camber and therefore grip while turning. This creates a large scrub angle, which results in toe out during braking. That is not a problem if you are mostly always braking while going in a straight line, but is pretty dangerous on road cars driven by people of varying skill, on varying roads, with varying conditions.
Race cars can dial in a lot of caster, which you might not want to do on a road car because it makes the steering very heavy.
Race cars don't have to use rubber inserts in their suspension for comfort, so they get better control over toe angles and other aspects.
There is also a limit to how stiff you can make the suspension on a road car before the car becomes too unstable when driving over bumpy terrain. But if you make the suspension too soft, especially on a car like the Valkyrie, you increase roll... you increase pitch which will mess with the underbody of the car which needs to stay perfectly level for maximum downforce... and your suspension will bottom out under all the downforce the car will be creating. The Valkyrie will have active suspension to deal with this exact problem, but even so, you can only do so much, because the car needs to have spring rates ready to deal with normal roads.
There is more, but to make this short, not only can race cars get away with lots of things that will increase the tire grip considerably, but they can also be set up individually for each track. The only thing that the Valkyrie can do is lower its ride height. That might lead to some suspension geometry improvements (in addition to downforce gains), but it might also lead to a lot of drawbacks and it probably will if the car is set up to handle well while driven on the road with the normal ride height.
My guess is that the simulator numbers being fed to us by Aston Martin are with the Valkyrie having a suspension setup specifically for Silverstone. Which is nowhere close to what the setup will be when the car is sold to customers. So I would put the actual real world number to about 1:50... and maybe something like 1:55 without adjusted ride height - the configuration you will actually be able to enjoy on the road.
But, it's worth mentioning that all I know about suspension I learned from youtube videos, so I might be wrong
.
Valkyrie AMR Pro - 1:23.208 - 105%
F1 - 1:27.369 - 100%
Valkyrie (Track Pack, LRH, Slicks) 1:30.070 - 97%
Valkyrie - (Low Ride Height, Slicks) 1:31.970 - 95%
LMP1 - 1:36.015 - 91.00%
Valkyrie (Low Ride Height) - 1:38.970 - 88.28%
LMP2 - 1:40.948 - 86.55%
LMGTE Pro - 1:54.171 - 76.52%
LMGTE Am - 1:56.034 - 75.30%
GT3 - 2:02.687 - 71.21%
Senna - 2:09.277 - 67.58%
Normally, slicks - when compared to top street legal tires like Trofeo Rs or Cup 2s - are about 2-3s per minute faster, depending on exactly what slick tire you are running and what circuit you are on. Which, incidentally, also means that the Senna still wouldn't quite be able to match a GT3 car
. Perhaps the difference is bigger when very high levels of downforce are present, but provisionally I put the non-slick Valkyrie at being 7s slower. Which would roughly match the "faster than LMP2 on Cup2s" claim.However, do I think that a car sold to customers will actually be this fast? Not really.
One thing I haven't seen anyone really talk about yet is suspension. Yet it is with suspension that race cars gain a major advantage over any road car - and it is an advantage that you can't simply make up without making the road car undrivable. For example:
Normal cars use something called the Ackermann steering geometry, which basically means that when cornering the inner tire is set to turn slightly more than the outside tire, so that the tires don't slip when having to cover slightly different distances during the turn. However, for complicated reasons having to with slip angles and tire contact patches, racing cars can choose to employ anti-Ackermann geometry to maximize grip on fast circuits. This is something that a road car could never do because doing so actually decreases grip in slower corners, it would destroy tires immediately and it would lead to very bad handling.
To manipulate the size of the tire contact patch during hard cornering, racing cars run a lot of negative camber. Again, on a road car you don't really wanna do dial too much because it results in excessive tire wear and bad handling on any road that isn't completely flat.
Most racing cars have zero KPI to gain camber and therefore grip while turning. This creates a large scrub angle, which results in toe out during braking. That is not a problem if you are mostly always braking while going in a straight line, but is pretty dangerous on road cars driven by people of varying skill, on varying roads, with varying conditions.
Race cars can dial in a lot of caster, which you might not want to do on a road car because it makes the steering very heavy.
Race cars don't have to use rubber inserts in their suspension for comfort, so they get better control over toe angles and other aspects.
There is also a limit to how stiff you can make the suspension on a road car before the car becomes too unstable when driving over bumpy terrain. But if you make the suspension too soft, especially on a car like the Valkyrie, you increase roll... you increase pitch which will mess with the underbody of the car which needs to stay perfectly level for maximum downforce... and your suspension will bottom out under all the downforce the car will be creating. The Valkyrie will have active suspension to deal with this exact problem, but even so, you can only do so much, because the car needs to have spring rates ready to deal with normal roads.
There is more, but to make this short, not only can race cars get away with lots of things that will increase the tire grip considerably, but they can also be set up individually for each track. The only thing that the Valkyrie can do is lower its ride height. That might lead to some suspension geometry improvements (in addition to downforce gains), but it might also lead to a lot of drawbacks and it probably will if the car is set up to handle well while driven on the road with the normal ride height.
My guess is that the simulator numbers being fed to us by Aston Martin are with the Valkyrie having a suspension setup specifically for Silverstone. Which is nowhere close to what the setup will be when the car is sold to customers. So I would put the actual real world number to about 1:50... and maybe something like 1:55 without adjusted ride height - the configuration you will actually be able to enjoy on the road.
But, it's worth mentioning that all I know about suspension I learned from youtube videos, so I might be wrong
.
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I agree with you, can’t see how the Valkyrie will be faster than about 1:55, but even this time is very impressive - a massive 15 sec faster than the Senna!! What I don’t understand is how just a set up specifically for Silverstone can improve the time with more than 10-15 sec as you say, this is to much IMO.
manuelf
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Yes - most likely there is the need to tune suspension settings of Valkyrie track layout specificly to exploit its capabilities. But why shouldn't AMR NOT be doing it?
If you currently look at e.g. sport auto supertest trials, there already - for comparably simple cars like a Porsche GT3RS/GT2RS - the OEM shows up with a significant amount of technicians to prepare/setup the car!
The " only" thing, which sport auto does, is to document, whether f.i. the suspension settings taken were within the official bandwidth of settings ...
So - who could blame AMR for documenting an insane wide suspension setting range (with a clear recommendation for typical street usage) and within this range to aggressively optimize for the track in question, where it is going to be tested? Exactly - no one! The car magazines - always hunting for new track records - did open up the can of worms already by allowing OEMs to show up with crews and let them specifically prepare the test cars...
If you currently look at e.g. sport auto supertest trials, there already - for comparably simple cars like a Porsche GT3RS/GT2RS - the OEM shows up with a significant amount of technicians to prepare/setup the car!
The " only" thing, which sport auto does, is to document, whether f.i. the suspension settings taken were within the official bandwidth of settings ...
So - who could blame AMR for documenting an insane wide suspension setting range (with a clear recommendation for typical street usage) and within this range to aggressively optimize for the track in question, where it is going to be tested? Exactly - no one! The car magazines - always hunting for new track records - did open up the can of worms already by allowing OEMs to show up with crews and let them specifically prepare the test cars...
Bridster
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What I am talking about is fundamentally different from adjustments you could do to a road car. KPI and Caster are are determined by the relative position of the upper and lower control arm ball joints on the steering knuckle, while roll and pitch center depend on the position of upper and lower control arm ball joints on the chasis. These points are all fixed and cannot be changed unless your chasis or your knuckle has multiple mounting points, as seen here for example:
Camber and Toe can be adjusted more easily with cam bolts or metal shims, but to a limited degree and they still change depending on how the fixed geometry functions, so dialing in more camber might not necessarily help you if the geometry isn't set for it. Funnily enough, if you lower the car with adaptive dampers, that actually does change the roll and pitch center, as well as Camber, KPI and most all of the other parameters, but that's not a good thing at all unless the geometry has been set up for this. And because you can't change the positions of the ball joints that are fixed, this means you need to choose whether to set it up for road use or track use. There is no amount of fiddling at the track that can change that.
In effect, the Valkyrie that is "set up" for Silverstone is most likely basically a completely different car suspension wise than the customer Valkyrie.
Camber and Toe can be adjusted more easily with cam bolts or metal shims, but to a limited degree and they still change depending on how the fixed geometry functions, so dialing in more camber might not necessarily help you if the geometry isn't set for it. Funnily enough, if you lower the car with adaptive dampers, that actually does change the roll and pitch center, as well as Camber, KPI and most all of the other parameters, but that's not a good thing at all unless the geometry has been set up for this. And because you can't change the positions of the ball joints that are fixed, this means you need to choose whether to set it up for road use or track use. There is no amount of fiddling at the track that can change that.
In effect, the Valkyrie that is "set up" for Silverstone is most likely basically a completely different car suspension wise than the customer Valkyrie.
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Really looks like LMP-racer with its canopy roof, love it!
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