Thanks to the finds of F1 designer Newey, Verstappen is too quick for everyone

Adrian Newey invariably holds his A4-sized red notepad firmly under his left arm on Formula 1 circuits, clutching it securely from the eager eyes of the competition. It contains the latest inspirations from the most successful car designer ever in Formula 1. A master of lines and shapes, Newey (63) is the silent force behind Max Verstappen’s sovereign season.

At a young age, Newey knew he was destined to draw race cars. His father, a veterinarian, built cars from kits in his spare time. 11-year-old Newey was happy to help. ‘But it quickly became boring to make other people’s designs. So I started sketching myself and making bits of metal and fiberglass. I had no idea what I was doing, but it sparked my interest in design,” Newey said in a Red Bull podcast.

For creative minds like Newey, Formula 1 is then the Valhalla. One brilliant, experimental find can be decisive. It is not without reason that the rule of thumb has been applicable in the premier class since the very first race in 1950: the car determines how good a driver can be.

Newey chose to study aerospace engineering at the University of Southampton. Thanks to this study, he learned everything about aerodynamics.

Equally important to him was the traditionally strong link between the university and F1 teams. Immediately after graduating in 1980, Newey went to work in the aerodynamics department of Fittipaldi’s F1 team. In 1988 he designed his first F1 car for the modest team March. Although that car didn’t win races and he was eventually fired, it was enough for the top teams to see his unique talent.

His sense of aerodynamics in particular stood out. In Newey’s philosophy it is essential to see the car as a whole rather than per part. Only in this way, according to him, is it possible to find the holy grail when it comes to F1 cars: a car with little air resistance (i.e. fast) and a lot of grip (i.e. good controllability).

Everything has to give way to the perfect line with him. He regularly drives motorcycle builders crazy with it; they are instructed to cram their already complex creation into an even more complex and often especially cramped, narrow design. Simply because the air currents then flow better over the car.

Every line counts

His creations are therefore difficult to copy; each line plays a role in the overarching concept. Also famous are the anecdotes about his office in the Red Bull factory in Milton Keynes. Newey is the only one there who still sketches on an old-fashioned drawing table, while his younger colleagues work next to him with ultramodern design and drawing computers.

It helps him to keep an overview. For the same reason, he doesn’t spend hours studying photos of competing cars. He prefers to physically walk past a car, armed with his red notepad and black pen. “Then you see them in full 3D, with no restrictions,” he said in the Red Bull podcast. ‘Sometimes something catches my attention. But I also look at our own car a lot from our garage, from as many angles as possible.’

He likes his job best when something rigorous changes. “I can start with a blank sheet of paper,” Newey said in an interview on his stable’s site last year. Stability, he says, makes his work repetitive. ‘Nobody will come up with new ideas then. Instead, existing concepts are endlessly built upon. Winning then becomes a matter of who has the most resources to make those adjustments. That’s not as satisfying as doing something completely new.”

There isn’t a second of the day that Newey doesn’t think about things that can make his cars better. “Adrian is always a month ahead of us,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said in an interview with broadcaster Deutsche Welle in 2011. “The rest of the factory is trying to keep up with him.”

It is a method that made him extremely successful. For over thirty years, Newey has found gaps in car rules that others don’t. His cars have won 191 races, 11 constructors’ titles and 7 drivers’ titles to date. He is the only designer to design championship cars (Williams, McLaren and Red Bull) for three teams.

Ayrton Senna

His career reads like one big jubilant story. But at the mention of one name there will always be a serious frown on his face: Ayrton Senna.

Newey designed the Williams car in which Senna crashed at Imola in 1994. Just thirty years later, there is still no indisputable explanation for the crash of the legendary three-time champion. It is only certain that his steering rod was broken in half.

In his 2017 autobiography, How to Build a Car, Newey writes candidly about the melancholy feeling he experiences when he thinks about Senna. “Whether that steering rod caused the crash or not, there’s no denying that there were poorly engineered parts on that car that should never have been on it.”

He said he had ‘messed up’ the aerodynamics, leaving Senna with an unstable car. “I will always feel some responsibility for his death, but no guilt,” wrote Newey, who was charged with manslaughter along with others in the protracted lawsuit after Senna’s death and was acquitted.

After Senna’s accident, he doubted whether he wanted to stay in Formula 1. He had to rediscover his love for the sport. It worked. If he had made a different decision, things might have turned out very differently with, for example, Red Bull.

Newey has been working for Max Verstappen’s racing stable since 2006. How important Newey is to Red Bull is especially noticeable when he is not there. In the midst of Mercedes’ hegemony between 2014 and 2021, Newey became somewhat demotivated, as he felt the importance of engine power overshadowed that of a good car. He took a step back to focus on developing a state-of-the-art sports car.

Masterpiece

Suddenly Red Bull’s cars had problems that never existed before. In 2017, for example, the team missed the mark with data from wind tunnel tests, which resulted in incorrect aerodynamics. Newey was rushed back to the team full-time. It explains his palatial salary of reportedly 10 million euros a year.

The car he designed for this season may well go down in the books as his masterpiece. Newey faced a monster job in the winter. He had interfered with last year’s car until the very last race because of the intense title battle between Verstappen and Hamilton. At the same time, the cars completely changed for 2022.

The air flowing over the car was no longer decisive for, for example, the grip, but the air movement under the car became crucial; the so-called ground effect. The car is sucked onto the asphalt via two tunnel-like notches at the bottom (the floor).

Coincidentally, Newey had written his master’s thesis at the University of Southampton on exactly this phenomenon over forty years earlier. The inspiration splashed off from the car that Red Bull showed at the test days this year. In particular, the complex sides full of waves and lines stood out.

The RB18 immediately turned out to be bloody fast. Verstappen struggled with controllability in the first races, but Newey quickly brushed those teething problems out. It led to a car that won all titles well before the final race and equaled the record number of victories in a season. And the season isn’t over yet.

Last Sunday’s image at the Red Bull pit wall at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin was telling. Immediately after Verstappen crossed the finish line for the win and with it Red Bull’s first constructors title since 2013, Newey received a hug from team manager Jonathan Wheatley and team boss Christian Horner put a hand on his shoulder. They thanked him. Once again he had delivered a masterpiece.

Newey accepted the compliments with a humble smile. He is simply still doing what he dreamed of as a child: inventing fast cars that pioneer the boundaries of what is physically possible.