Aston Martin had a good Las Vegas Grand Prix, ending the race with each Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll up within the points-paying positions. Lance even managed to enhance his positions from nineteenth in the beginning to fifth when the checkered flag fell. Perhaps the drivers got slightly extra experience and data from a trio of automotive folks driving the brand new Aston DBX 707 right after qualifying on Saturday morning. Surely friend-of-the-site Matt Farah gave Stroll a couple of tips that could find that speed for the race, right?
Joking aside, Farah being considered one of just three non-FIA-rated drivers to see the course from behind the wheel at speed is pretty dang cool. Even when the 697-horsepower SUV isn’t seeing the sorts of speeds that the F1 cars were doing, it’s mightily impressive. The automotive ran as much as 173 miles per hour on the strip straight, while the F1 teams were seeing around 219 with a tow.
This might be the automotive guy equivalent of seven minutes in heaven. Matt got to foot the automotive around a brand recent F1 circuit for just shy of 11 minutes of driving. Admittedly you possibly can’t learn a complete lot a couple of automotive in eleven minutes, but you possibly can learn that it’s fast, and that’s the purpose of this exercise.
I’m not normally one for giant and fast SUVs, but I’ll admit that the DBX 707 looks pretty rattling good under the lights of Las Vegas on this shiny purple/blue paintjob. I’m sure I might never pay the $370,000 that Matt says this automotive would cost to construct, but I’d have a tough time turning down a chance to provide it a run around an F1 street circuit in the midst of the night. That’s the stuff dreams are made from.
This Article First Appeared At jalopnik.com