A Newey car always bears his unmistakable signature, certainly the RB4
F1 espionage is very much the story du jour and it seems that switching teams with a head full of ideas is okay, while bringing your hard drive with you isn’t. In that case, Red Bull did rather well in persuading Newey to set up camp in Milton Keynes, his head brimming with the ideas that have produced so many Grand Prix wins.
In fact, our Chief Technical Officer has a charming, if quaint, insistence on occasionally resorting to a well sharpened 3B pencil and a drawing board the size of the deck on an aircraft carrier. Our security staff are under orders to stop anyone going through the gates with a drawing board under their arm.
When he should have been drinking in the Student Union Bar at Southampton University, Newey insisted on writing a thesis on ground-effect aerodynamics and gaining a first-class honours degree. Despite these handicaps, he immediately found himself working in racing for Fittipaldi Automotive. A move to the March team in 1981 saw Newey forge a career in the USA, with cars he designed winning in IMSA and CART, including three Indianapolis 500 victories. He returned to work in F1 for March, which was taken over by Leyton House, and Newey became the team’s Technical Director for three years from 1987. Williams then came knocking. After 58 race wins, five constructors’ and four drivers’ titles, Newey was on the move again, this time to McLaren in 1997, where he helped Mika Hakkinen to two drivers’ crowns. He came on board in 2006, with last year’s RB3 his first clean-sheet Red Bull car. In an ever more homogeneous world, a Newey car always seems to bear his unmistakable signature and that is certainly the case with the 2008 RB4.
“For the 2008 car, we had more time to refine the package, as the 2007 car was designed in quite a compressed period, and we didn’t know the details of the engine until very late in the programme. This time, knowing the Renault engine meant we were able to refine the installation.”
The arrival of Geoffrey Willis as Technical Director has allowed Newey to expand his own role within the company. “I am now much freer to concentrate on the performance aspects of the car, as well as getting involved with Christian and Geoff in strategic decisions about where we go in the future. Geoff’s arrival has given me more time to look at the broader picture.”
The new structure might also allow Adrian a bit more time to come out from behind the drawing board and indulge his enthusiasm for getting behind the wheel, with a 24-hour race in a Ferrari on the cards, as well as some Historic race outings in a GT40.
