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In Formula 1, the car isn’t everything, but at the end of the day, the way the team’s designers have gone about their task of creating a race car influences a team’s good luck on the track more than the quality of its team. Driving forces. It’s not that F1’s driving forces don’t matter, but even the most productive driving force on the grid will struggle to score points if it doesn’t drive a competitive car.
One designer has been guilty of creating competitive cars more than any other, writing 12 championship-winning cars in 32 years. His calling is Adrian Newey and this week we found out he’s up for a new job.
As in other sports, F1’s “dumb season” is what they call that era when contracts expire and other people replace teams; It’s called that because that’s what happens when there’s no genuine news to report, but you still want a story.
This year, the dummy season started long before the start of the year, and it was dumber than most. First, Andretti Cadillac snubbed the game, because an email was sent to a spam folder, and then seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton announced that he had left his longtime home, Mercedes, for Ferrari. When everything started to calm down, the Red Bull team started to look a little. . . imploded when Red Bull team boss Christian Horner accused misplaced behavior through an employee.
At the time, rumours were circulating that Red Bull superstar Max Verstappen might try to take advantage of the Horner scandal to leave the team. It didn’t happen, but something equally important happened: it led to Newey’s departure. The superstar designer will complete the Red Bull RB17 hypercar allocation before leaving the team in early 2025.
“Ever since I was a kid, I sought to be a fast car designer. My dream was to be an engineer in Formula 1, and I was fortunate enough to make that dream come true,” Newey said in a statement. His autobiography, which tells the story of how he made this possible, is worth reading, but today we’ve rounded up some galleries of Newey’s creations – an illustrated history of his motorist as the world’s most successful race car designer.
Newey’s first race cars were not F1 machines. He raced for race car manufacturer March, and after working as a race engineer in IndyCar and then F2 for March’s clients, he designed the March 82G, also known as the Lobster Claw, which raced in the IMSA GTP. He then wrote the March 85C, winner of the Indianapolis 500 in 1985, then its successor in 1986, before leaving March for a few years and then returning to design his first F1 car for the small F1 team Leyton House in 1988. Newey designed the cars at Leyton House from March until 1990, when he joined Williams as lead designer.
Williams was a much more competitive team back then than it is today, and Newey’s FW14 proved to be one of the most successful F1 cars, taking seven wins in 1991 and 10 in 1992, earning Nigel Mansell the championship. In 1993, Alain Prost won the crown with the Newey-designed FW15C, then Damon Hill became champion in 1996 with the FW18, followed by Jacques Villeneuve in 1997 with the FW19.
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