Adrian Newey: I get bored immediately when I stop

Eight years ago, when the world championship teams switched to hybrid power plants and it became clear that Mercedes had an unconditional advantage, Adrian Newey thought about ending his career in Formula 1. Still, he finished as head of engineering at Red Bull Racing, and he still has a reputation as the most successful race car designer for at least the last three plus decades.

Since then, a lot of petrol has leaked, Formula 1 has again undergone reforms and Red Bull driver Max Verstappen started 2022 as world champion and won the title in a car built under Newey’s leadership.

“Honestly, I was very disappointed with everything that happened at the time,” he recalled in an interview with The Race. – I almost moved to Ferrari, that played a part in those processes, but still didn’t.

But most of all, I was plagued by the fact that we were trailing with an uncompetitive bike. Although I felt comfortable with Red Bull, and I didn’t want to change the team at all. But then we had a powerplant supplier that seemed more interested in the marketing impact Formula 1 brings than competitiveness…

In general, I started to lose my motivation. I still loved Formula 1, but not in this situation. And then came the Aston Martin Valkyrie sports car project and thanks to that I kept my spirits up and had something to do for a while.

And when we signed a contract with Honda, it became clear that we now had a partner who really wanted high results, and thanks to that everything changed.”

Adrian Newey likes to take on the really creative challenges of moving to a new technical regulation. But when the famous designer was first introduced to this document, he was initially unimpressed: “I like it when the regulations change, but when I first saw the new rules, I was very upset. At first it seemed to me that they were of a very rigid directive nature.

But if you study them a little more deeply, especially the part that concerns the side pontoons and the bottom, it turns out that this arrangement offers a very acceptable freedom of action. There’s more to it than you might think at first… So I’m not surprised we’ve seen such a variety of shapes. Although of course I did not foresee that Mercedes would offer such a solution. Talking about the rest of the cars, the shape of the side pontoons didn’t really surprise me.”

The high-speed pitching problem came as no surprise to Newey, as he worked in Formula 1 in the 1980s and saw the end of the first era of ground effect cars (straight out of college he became one of the Fittipaldi aerodynamicists).

“We knew there was such a potential problem,” he explained. – In the WEC, on sports prototypes of the LMP class, it has been manifested for a long time and is well known. And when Formula 1 switched to the new regulations, it was possible to foresee that we would have to deal with a build-up, but it is difficult to model and calculate the scale correctly. But at the same time, a certain experience made it possible to understand and take into account the reasons … “

However, for obvious reasons, Adrian Newey has not explained exactly what technical and aerodynamic solutions will allow Red Bull Racing to minimize the impact of this phenomenon on the RB18 car.

And yet, if eight years ago he didn’t rule out the possibility of saying goodbye to Formula 1, what is his mood now? Here’s what Newey said when asked about his retirement prospects: “That’s a good question because I love design. My whole career is construction and competition, which I enjoy a lot, although of course there is a certain pressure associated with that.

I am 63 years old and I immediately get bored if I stop and have nothing to do. I’ve always thought that then I could do motorcycle restoration, this is my hobby – I think it will keep me busy for a while, but eventually it will get boring too.

Maybe I’ll try to get a position where I can do general management – something like Rory Byrne works at Ferrari now and he’s quite comfortable. So far I can still be useful, but in the future it will be necessary to transfer powers to the person who becomes the leader. I will only contribute to the common cause – as long as the team deems it useful.