MILTON KEYNES, ENGLAND – JULY 01: Adrian Newey and Christian Horner share a joke before a race during the Red Bull Open House Go Karting at Daytona Motorsport on July 1, 2014 in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. (Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images)
Red Bull’s second successive Driver’s Championship with Max Verstappen, as well as the Constructors’ Championship, are just more feathers in Adrian Newey’s decorated cap. Since he joined the team in 2006, he’s designed cars that have won six Drivers’ Championships and five Constructors’ titles.
Small wonder, then, that team principal Christian Horner says that Chief Technical Officer Newey is “hugely” critical to the success of the team.
“Adrian is the only bloke that can see air,” said Horner. “He lives in The Matrix, and he’s been the conductor of the technical orchestra for all these years now, but he’s still very hands-on and at his drawing board.”
Newey joined Red Bull after an already-successful career designing championship-winning cars at Williams and McLaren. The success has continued alongside the championships: to date, his cars have won 193 grand prix.
“Adrian was the very best that’s ever been in Formula One,” said Horner. “So it was a question of how we could entice Adrian to join the Red Bull team.” Indeed, Horner added, “I had to argue with [McLaren boss] Ron Dennis to wrestle him out of McLaren.”
Adrian Newey seen at the Red Bull Racing Factory in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, 2020
But despite winning a championship in dominating fashion, this year was far from a cakewalk for the star designer.
“It was a very tough year” Horner admitted. “When you look at the statistics, it looks like we totally dominated it but certainly – in the first half of the season – Ferrari had their chances and probably a quicker package. But Max was outstanding throughout the year.”
However, Newey said the car was up for the challenge: “It’s a car I think we can be very proud of in as much as we had a tight championship battle through 2021, and arguably we put too much resource into that, so you’re not putting it into this brand new car with the new regulations we knew were coming. It’s a difficult balancing act. We focused on trying to get the fundamentals right, including front and rear suspension, the layers, and the radiators.”
We kind of struggled a little bit with the bounce in pre-season testing,” Newey admitted, which put the team on the back foot to start. “We’d already done a little bit of research and knew roughly what we needed to do to improve it, so when we put the race package on in Bahrain, that catapulted us from definitely behind Ferrari to broadly level. After that, it was a matter of developing it and certainly the second half, we had a fully competitive package.”
Adrian Newey seen at the Red Bull Racing Factory in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, 2020
It’s certainly a lot better than the long years of Mercedes dominance when the team struggled. Still, the team did learn lessons.
“The most important thing was keeping the team together,” according to Horner, and “focusing on the things we could control. We had great loyalty during that period. Honda shared the same passion, we took that risk, and we were then able to really start to get the foundations in place for a championship challenge.”
Newey said the most important lesson for future success is to “have a decent engine. We went into the hybrid era, and Renault got it wrong, so that was pretty depressing because you realized that in your foreseeable future if you do a spectacular job, you might snatch the odd win, but you’re never going to win a championship. That was a reset.”
As for maintaining the dominance the team has since found, he said that next year’s regulations make that difficult: “There’s no testing. And the reduction of internal testing means we can therefore evaluate less, less different components, less different ideas if we’re really smart and always puts on the right things on the model. So, it’s difficult. It’s a restriction for sure that will affect us.”
“We do have the best car,” Newey concluded. “But Ferrari won’t be resting…they’ll be right back. And then, of course, Mercedes. So, it’s going to be a tough year for sure.”
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