Adrian Newey: I studied the ground effect in college

The impressive success achieved by the Red Bull Racing team in 2022 is largely due to the enviable aerodynamic efficiency of the RB18, built under the direction of Adrian Newey.

With his unique vision and experience, Milton Keynes’ chief of engineering was best prepared for the challenges of returning to F1 ground effect, and Red Bull Racing was the first to tackle the annoying phenomenon of high-speed cars.

On the final day of testing before the season in Bahrain, the RB18 was tested with a slew of aerodynamic body kit elements, almost eliminating the build-up while other teams were just starting to sort out the problem.

It was extremely important that Newey studied ground effect in detail in the late 1970s and early 1980s during his years of study at the University of Southampton.

“I studied ground effect as an aerodynamic phenomenon at university, and the subject of my last project during my studies was its application to motorsport,” Newey said in the German edition of Auto Motor und Sport. “I needed an internship and in 1980 I sent requests to all the racing teams, but most of them didn’t respond. It was only Harvey Postlethwaite, then with Fittipaldi, who offered me a job in his aerodynamics department as an intern.

As it turned out, I was in charge of this department that day, which consisted only of me!”

More than 40 years later, when Newey began studying the 2022 technical regulations, he already fully understood the nature of the bodybuilding problem: “I understood that this was waiting for us. But what surprised me most was the magnitude of the problem. Although actually everyone should have foreseen it in advance. This phenomenon is due to the nature of such machines.

But the fact is that this problem is difficult to reproduce in the process of aerodynamic studies. In a wind tunnel, a car model is fixed in a certain position and this phenomenon cannot be reproduced. But there were ways to predict it, so we figured it out pretty quickly.

A series of updates, tested on the last day of testing in Bahrain, made it possible to reduce the impact of the build-up to a level where it no longer caused problems.

The problem with machines that use ground effect is that the rider tends to fly at the limit of aerodynamic stability, but if this limit is exceeded, the swing starts. Finding the right compromise between downforce and swing is not easy. On the first attempt we were unable to achieve sufficient stability.”

But in reality, it wasn’t just aerodynamics. Newey knew from the start what the rivals would discover much later: “Even when we were with the Fittipaldi team, we experimented with rubber springs at Silverstone. Harvey Postlethwaite loved that sort of thing. But it turned out that these elements only magnified the build-up.

The car chattered so that the front wheels came off the track in a straight line. It was a good lesson to understand that mechanical parameters can also play a role. The fact is that when setting up such machines, you have to make serious compromises.

The trick is to find the optimal balance between ground clearance, downforce and sway. Of course 40 years ago we didn’t have the modeling technologies we have today. We had to rely more on our own knowledge. On the other hand, the technical regulations at the time allowed for more freedom…”