Newey Sensation

First of all you need to be playing New Sensation by INXS in the background to fully immerse yourself in this blog post ;-)

So, other than a bad song-title pun, what is this blog post all about?

The answer is Adrian Newey.

The Master

Some of you may know everything there is to know about this guy and others may have just heard his name being thrown around in commentary.

For those not in the know he is the mastermind behind most of the aerodynamic innovations & designs seen in the sport of F1 in modern times.

Actually, that reference to modern times needs some context.

Newey has been involved in F1 car design since the late 1980s which I'm not even sure counts as modern times given there has been more F1 run since he joined than before!

Before his head became aerodynamic

Cars designed by his pencil (yes, he still prefers a pencil) have won 186 Grand Prix as of the 2022 Belgium GP.  

They have also won 10 constructors titles with three different teams and seven different drivers have brought home a combined 11 World Drivers Championships in one of his cars.

He is roundly regarded as the best designer the sport has ever seen.

So, where did it all begin?

A graduate of Southampton University in Aeronautics & Astronautics in 1980, Newey first cut his teeth in the Fittipaldi F1 team who he joined directly after graduating and worked on their F8 as a Chief Aerodynamicist.

The F8

A year later he was working for the March team and found himself designing cars within the GTP series where his first project won the title two years running.

The car was nicknamed the lobster-claw given it's unique looking front end which allowed for huge amounts of air to be directed to Venturi tunnels under the car.

Lobster with a side of Venturi

Hmmm, ground effect experience as far back as the 1980s....wonder if that will ever feature in his future design principles ;-)

March then moved him over to their Indy Car project as a designer for the Truesports team in 1984.

His March 85C design won the 1985 championship and also the prestigious Indy 500 that same year.

Indy-deed this was a good car

After a spell away from the team with Newman-Haas and also before that with a certain Ross Brawn at the short-lived FORCE F1 team, he eventually found himself in Formula 1 with March as the Chief Designer of the March 881 which would be the first F1 car he designed.

And so it begins...

This car was the fastest normally aspirated car on the grid in 1988 but his cars in subsequent years did not set the world alight and a combination of cars not being ready on time, poor results, and a series of mechanical failures led to Newey being fired by March in the summer of 1990.

It's often said you learn the most from your mistakes and he quickly got the opportunity to put these lessons into practice at Williams.

Patrick Head signed him up quickly and the FW14 car was a match for the McLaren of Senna even if they couldn't quite take either championship.

Must have a mustache to drive

However, 1992 saw a Newey car take both titles as Williams took the constructors title and Mansell secured the drivers title.

The FW15C repeated this feat in 1993 but with Alain Prost behind the wheel.

va va voom

Good old politics appeared to get in the way then as, while he was ready to be a technical director of a team, his path forward in the sport was essentially blocked at Williams due to Patrick Head's position within the team.  He went on gardening leave in 1996 prior to his next venture in 1997 at McLaren.

His MP4/13 was the car to beat in the late 90s with titles in 98 & 99 plus a very close run battle in 2000 which ultimately saw Mika Hakkinen just missing out on the the drivers title.

Pleased to Mika you

Then came a small lull in his career as the latter stages of his McLaren career was riddled with rumors of discontent and even suggestions he may retire altogether.

Then Red Bull came knocking.

It's true that the start of the Newey-Red Bull era was not a raging success.  However the constant development and small steps forward culminated in the RB5 arriving in 2009.

awww, little Seb!

New regulations had arrived this year which provided an almost blank canvas opportunity across the grid.

That season saw six wins and a second placed finish in the constructors title.

This was a sign of things to come and the 2010 RB6 was utterly dominant.

Newey gives you wings

With nine wins the team took the constructors title and Vettel took the drivers title.

From this point until 2014 no other designers car won either title as the RB7, 8, and 9 continued to bring home the bacon.

Another rule change in 2014 though saw the pendulum swing to Mercedes as Red Bull suffered with the Renault powertrain.

A solitary win in Canada that year was thought to be his last win as Red Bull announced he would no longer be involved in the day to day design of the F1 team.

Newey had become frustrated with the direction the sport was going in and it was seen that he would pursue other avenues within Red Bull such as the Americas Cup sailing team.

In fact in 2016 he was one of the lead designers of the Aston Martin Valkyrie, a joint venture between Aston Martin, Red Bull, and several other manufacturers.

The goal was to create the fastest street-legal car in the world.

Just popping to the store...

It certainly does look a beast and it's track only version, the AMR Pro, is even more of a beast.  So much so that it's been referred to as the ultimate hyper car and has been advertised as being able to do the 8.5 mile Le Mans 24 hour circuit in 3 minutes 20 seconds which would put it right up there with front running LMP1 cars!

Needs more wing I think

So, his focus and energies are away from F1 since then?

Nope!

The new era of regulations for 2022 allowed him to work his creative magic again, just as he did back in 2009.

In a Red Bull video released by the team earlier this year he gave his view on just how big a challenge they faced:

"It's a huge regulation change, the biggest one we've had since 1983, when the venturi cars were banned and flat-bottomed cars were introduced"

This new challenge seems to be one he has risen to and his long background with ground effect seems to have allowed Red Bull to get a jump on others.  The RB18 is a work of art.

The rocket ship

Rather than fully starting from scratch, they appear to have started with a pretty good car and their development has been focused on making it better as opposed to other teams that have maybe had to adapt to challenges they had not foreseen.

One such area was the phenomenon known as porpoising where a cars downforce loss and recovery sees the car bounce up & down. 

The downforce pulls the car right down to the track which essentially cuts off the airflow resulting in a large loss of downforce.  

This loss allows the car to ride back up at which point the air flow can create the downforce again, sucking the car back down and so the cycle repeats.

You won't see me in a wind tunnel!

Apparently it is very hard to observe this within a wind tunnel setting so this may explain why teams did not anticipate this and have had to react as they saw it on the race track rather than in the development data.  

Newey had prior experience of this so, while not completely avoiding it, Red Bull were able to design a car that did not suffer as badly from it and one which they seem to have been able to settle much quicker than their rivals.

In an interview with The Race he stated:

"We knew it was a potential problem. With these regs you could see that was a possibility but whether they would and how you model that, was the difficulty"

2022 seems to be a perfect blend of a super talented driver in Max Verstappen being given the keys to a car perfectly at home on high speed straights as much as it is in the corners.  

Spa really showed us this where Red Bull were not only quickest in sectors 1 & 3 where all the speed lies, but also in sector 2 where high downforce is rewarded.

These two demands should conflict meaning you cannot dominate in both however Red Bull did just that.

Adrian Newey really is brilliant at what he does.

Mind you, given that he has an Astronautics degree, is it any surprise he has designed a rocket ship?