Red Bull Racing kicked off the 2016 season with the news that - in partnership with Aston Martin - the team would be developing the hypercar of Adrian Newey's wildest dreams. While the joint venture is a marketing plus, is the concept of an F1-quick road car a celebration or a humiliation of Formula One? Kate Walker and Chris Medland debate.
Chris Medland on case for AM-RB 001
Surely this is a great opportunity for F1 to showcase what it can do? Engineers often talk about being hamstrung by regulations, and the Aston Martin partnership has left Adrian Newey like a kid in a sweetshop as he gets the freedom to really cut loose. It's the antidote to the F1 restrictions which appear to have curbed Newey's motivation in recent years.
"I think it demonstrates without the constraints of Formula One regulations it enables Adrian to have a completely free hand," Red Bull's Christian Horner told me in Melbourne. "Obviously an enclosed bodywork as well has its advantages, but I'm certain it will be quite an awesome machine and hopefully quite an iconic car when it hits the road."
And Horner's under no illusions that it will be a car that sorts the men from the boys: "It would be great fun to drive a car like that but I better get in the gym first I guess!"
OK, so an F1 car being beaten by a road car around a circuit we race on would not look great, but that's simply down to the DNA of Formula One - the key word being Formula - rather than any slight on the work that is being done by designers inside the paddock.
The sport could even learn a thing or two from the planned Aston and Red Bull tie-up. Pirelli motorsport boss Paul Hembery rightly points out there are no limits in terms of what F1 can do as it makes its own rules.
"Clearly F1 could do what it wants," Hembery said. "F1 could have 1500hp, they could have cars a couple of hundred kilos less weight than they've got, they could have tyres which are focused on absolute performance. It's quite difficult when you make those sorts of comparisons to try and come to a conclusion that suggests one is better than the other.
"F1 has a regulation and it follows it and it has a certain outcome, but if you said do you want to make F1 even quicker then of course you could do it if you really set out to, it's just a matter of what constraints you put on the regulation?"
On top of all that, F1 methodology will be utilised in building the new hypercar, which means the new Aston will act as a bridge between the sport and the road. Apparently we don't champion the link between F1-driven developments and the everyday car enough, so here's an opportunity to do so.
Kate Walker on the case against
Perhaps I have spent too long working in F1, and in the wrong era, because my initial reaction to the concept of Newey's dream machine was one of concern.
I'd like to say I was excited by the technological possibilities of Adrian Newey unleashed -- we all remember the Red Bull X1 prototype from 2010 -- but having spent an awful lot of time writing about the FIA's Action for Road Safety campaign in recent years, the idea of allowing amateur drivers access to a car capable of super-F1 speeds scares the bejeezus out of me.
When the collaboration between the two iconic brands was announced last week, Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer proudly said the AM-RBR 001 would be faster than an F1 car around Silverstone. There's no doubt in anyone's mind that it will be both technically impressive and pretty damn cool.
But the problem with any super-hyper-mega-car you might actually covet these days is that the rules of the road mean you've got to get it out on a track to really put it through its paces.
Track days at FIA Grade-I homologated circuits - any track deemed safe enough to host an F1 grand prix - are one thing, as amateur drivers have got the safety net of massive sweeps of tarmaced run-off before s--- gets serious. But what happens when you take your F1-quick car to a 'run what you brung' event at Santa Pod or Castle Combe?
The flip side concerns the image of Formula One. If anyone with a couple of million pounds to spare (that's all of us, right?) can buy a car capable of setting a new F1 lap record and not need a racing license to operate it, won't F1 start to look a little shonky and slow in comparison?
If our approach is that it's not safe for professional racing drivers to go significantly faster on safety-approved circuits than they do at present, what on earth are we doing allowing loaded ams to attempt to match those speeds? And if it is safe, why on earth did we restrict ourselves to improving lap times by three to five seconds in 2017?
Here's hoping the AM-RB 001 will be the kick up the bum that F1 needs to focus on designing automotive spaceships worthy of a teenaged boy's bedroom wall. And if not, perhaps our national motoring associations will require that supercar drivers get racing licenses before playing with their shiny toys at track days. Either option is a win in my book.