Adrian Newey won titles at Williams and McLaren before helping to build the Red Bull powerhouse. And he’s not done yet…
ALEX KALINAUCKAS
ADRIAN NEWEY
The list of Formula 1 accomplishments not featuring the influence of Adrian Newey gets ever-smaller. And in 2023, the Red Bull RB19 finally wrestled the mantle of ‘F1’s most dominant car’ away from the 1988 McLaren MP4/4. For the second time since Newey’s switch from the Woking team in 2006, Red Bull is dominating grand prix racing.
Newey has been in his current post of chief technical officer since joining the team. His role means he sits above current technical director Pierre Wache, but isn’t overly involved in the squad’s process side of its day-to-day engineering, preferring to concentrate on development aspects. Team principal Christian Horner recently explained how Newey’s role has “evolved over the last few years”, and that he “has the ability to come in, come out and work on other projects, and that’s part of the evolution of any team”.
Wache explains how this works. With every new Red Bull and subsequent in-season car development plan, Newey is “coming from sideways and trying to help us or challenge us on different aspects and in different aspects of the team – it could be mechanical design, aero or vehicle dynamics”.
“He’s irreplaceable,” adds the Frenchman. “I would say [Newey’s work is] more challenging [ideas] than [agreeing]. But I think it’s good. Because when you have a step back, you see different things. He also has a different background to all of us and some knowledge that we don’t have because we didn’t experience that. He’s a very smart person and he’s still very open-minded. Normally with people with plenty of success, their idea is the best. But he’s not like that. He’s working as a mentor and challenging us.”
In his evolved role, Newey remains a regular on the pitwall for Red Bull at race events throughout each F1 season, still stalking the race grids looking at and analysing other designs. And at last season’s GP in Mexico City, Autosport got the chance to sit down with him for an exclusive interview.
In a wide-ranging conversation – where his softly spoken nature briefly has to compete with the racket of a vacuum cleaner as the team’s hospitality unit is prepared for race day guests, at an event Max Versta
