Newey: The 1994 car is one of my disappointments

Adrian Newey has not only designed championship cars for Red Bull Racing, McLaren and Williams. There were also difficult times in the career of the British designer: Ayrton Senna died in 1994 while driving his Williams FW16. Nearly thirty years after these tragic events, Newey said he had “completely failed” the transition from active to passive suspension, making the 1994 car difficult to drive.

Adrian Newey: “The 1994 car is one of my biggest disappointments, regardless of its connection with the Imola incident. The only thing that could be said for sure about that car was that it was aerodynamically unstable.

We rode the active suspension for two years, but I admit it’s my fault for completely messing up the aerodynamics while returning to passive suspension and much higher ground clearance. That car was very difficult to drive, and the more bumps there were on the track, the worse the car handled. Of course Imola is quite a bumpy track, but Ayrton performed absolutely exceptionally in qualifying.

Of course I thought about leaving [после гибели Айртона Сенны]. Only a stupid person or someone with something wrong would not ask themselves such questions. But it would be too selfish if myself or Patrick Head decided to leave and leave the team.

Regardless of the cause of the accident, we had to learn from the mistakes and take all measures to prevent something like this from happening again in the future.”