Lanzante plans to make Red Bull RB17 street-legal

The Red Bull RB17, whose concept was unveiled last week, is an extreme track car built by legendary F1 designer Adrian Newey to be faster than current F1 racing cars.

Newey never intended to run the car on public roads, but Lanzante, experienced in converting circuit cars into street machines, was ready to take the RB17 on the road.

In a statement to Top Gear released Thursday, Lasante said that several future owners of the RB17 have already asked the company to develop a public road-going conversion of the RB17, and development work will begin soon.

The key, Lasante said, is to make sure that the car can be used on public roads while still being optimized for the track.

Red Bull has not shown the final design of the RB17. The concept version shown last week is larger than the final design and is merely a mock-up. It has no interior or powertrain.

Lanzante did not say in which regions the car will be roadworthy. In the UK, where the Red Bull F1 team and Lasante are based, it is easy to make a non-production vehicle roadworthy because of the single vehicle type approval rules.

Circuit cars that Lasante has made roadworthy in the past include McLaren's P1 GTR and Senna GTR, and Pagani's Zonda Revolucion and Huayra R.

However, the team has not yet made any of these cars roadworthy.

Unlike the others, however, the RB17 is an entirely different beast, as it was not derived from a road car. It is powered by a Cosworth 4.5-liter V10 engine that rises to 15,000 rpm and has an auxiliary electric motor to further boost power and provide torque fill, first gear, and reverse functions. The engine alone is expected to produce 1,000 hp and the electric motor an additional 200 hp.

In total, 50 units will be built.

According to Top Gear, the modifications will cost between 250,000 and 500,000 British pounds (about $325,000 to $650,000), which is cheap compared to the RB17's 5 million British pounds (about $6.5 million).