We've all dreamed about driving an F1
car on the public road, haven't we? What it would feel like on your favorite B-road or booting it onto the motorway, but now there's something that directly
transfers the experience of an F1 car to the road and it's just extraordinary. We're
not just talking about any Formula One car either. This is Lewis Hamilton's
Formula One car that's been handing it to the competition in various iterations
for the last five years.
Upon unveiling this powerful sports car, Mercedes-Benz announced that it
would manufacture 275 copies of this model in the world, and wealthy customers
paid for them years ago before they were made, and the price of Mercedes AMG
Project One exceeds 2.7 million US dollars.
It's the car formerly known as the AMG
Project One, just the AMG one, Prototypes of this thing are already running
around. Under there is the
actual 1.6 liter V6 turbo lifted directly from Lewis's 2015 F1 car, driving the
rear wheels. It will spin to an ear-splitting 11,000 rpm, Down from the 14,000
RPM it hits in F1,but then this thing has to idle at 1,200 rpm, not 4,000,and
be capable of doing the school run, not just setting lap times. AMG says
throttle response is better than a naturally aspirated V8 because there's an
electric motor to spin the turbo up instantly.
Like F1, this car is all about
recuperating and reusing every drop of energy. But the engine is just the
beginning. It can do 15 miles in total silence and
front-wheel drive. That's 1.2
seconds faster than a Porsche 918 Spyder and half a second quicker than the
Bugatti Chiron.
The One hasn't so much been styled as shaped by
the wind. Where it's not serving an aero purpose, the body is smooth and
slippery. The 10 spoke wheels available in aluminum or magnesium have carbon
inserts to minimize drag. Even the badge will be airbrushed on to save weight
and reduce resistance.
For every great champion to produce their best,
they need an archrival, and the Valkyrie is just that. Both these cars are born
from F1. This a slightly more literal translation. The Valkyrie a freak from the
mind of an F1 great, but however they've got there, what we've ended up with is
two cars with over a thousand horsepower. They're aero-obsessed, weight-
obsessed, and both are designed to eviscerate racetracks. So, just like the P1,
the 918 and the LA Ferrari defined their eras.
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