Design of greatness: How Adrian Newey became an F1 designer

“I was joining the aerodynamics team. What I didn’t realise was that I was going to be the aerodynamics team. The F8 was a quite a good car, but there was no money for development.”

Eventually the Fittipaldi team splintered and its management team split up: Harvey went off to Ferrari, Peter Warr to Lotus and Peter Macintosh to March. Newey had an offer from Warr to move to Lotus, and one from Macintosh to join March. Newey took the less glamorous route, feeling that he would get more experience more quickly at a production race car maker like March. Another shrewd move. Most would have jumped at the chance to progress in grand prix racing, especially under the wing of Colin Chapman, but he preferred the traditional ‘jack of all trades’ apprenticeship the likes of Patrick Head and John Barnard had at Lola.

“That’s the great thing about it. You’re involved in different formulae in all sorts of different areas aerodynamics, race engineering and mechanical. You learned a lot very quickly.

“I joined in two positions, firstly as race engineer. I was originally going to be with Christian Danner in Formula 2 in ’82, but he fired me after the first race. But Johnny Cecotto said he’d take me. I had one test session before the first race and then it was, ‘Off we go’. At the same time I was working in the drawing office in the week as a detail draughtsman.

“March’s GTP sports car was an unloved project, lying on the side, and because my final year project had been on ground effects, and ground effects applied to sports cars, I thought I should be able to do something with it. I went to Robin Herd and asked, and he said, ‘Be my guest’, but there was no budget to build a model and go wind tunnel testing. The car was designed by Max Sardou, and I modified it just by eye, using the results from my final year project, and took it over to Daytona. That was a hell of an experience, I can tell you.”

So, in January 1983, a 23-year-old and still very green Newey suddenly found himself running an IMSA GTP car in a 24-hour race.

“The car was finished about a week before the race, and I went with it, along with two or three mechanics from March. We arrived to find that the guy Robin had sold the car to was a wealthy American who reckoned he was pretty good in his Ferrari road car, and fancied a go at Daytona. We managed to persuade him that this wasn’t a good idea. He had a couple of reasonable drivers, Marty Hinze and Terry somebody [Wolters], and a third driver [Randy Lanier] turned up who was completely myopic, with spectacles like milk bottles.

“We started the race, and I sort of assumed the role of team manager because there wasn’t anybody else. We had no timing system so we didn’t know where we were in the order. We’d been working through the night before the race so were dog-tired, and the feeling was that it didn’t really matter; we reckoned it would break down two hours into the race and then we could all go home.

“We got to about 1am and the thing was still going when I went off for a pee. Like at Indianapolis, Daytona has this tower with all these numbers on it, and 88 was at the top. I thought, ‘That’s familiar’. I dashed back to the pits and, sure enough, we were 88. We actually led until it rained and we got water in the distributor cap at about 8am, but we eventually finished second. That gave it a bit more credibility; Al Holbert got involved and it became a serious effort. We did a Porsche engine installation and, in his hands, it won most of the races it entered for the rest of the year.”

Newey oversaw the 84G IMSA car before heading off for his first season in CART, where March loaned him out to one of its top teams.

“I went to Truesports and Bobby Rahal, where I assumed the job of race engineer and development engineer. We developed the car substantially throughout the season, and got a lot of weight out of it. I enjoyed that year, but again I was very wet behind the ears as far as race engineering was concerned. I went to just one oval test session before the season. It’s a whole different ball game. But I’ll always be very grateful to Bobby. He taught me a lot about how to engineer the car, and it was a very friendly series.”

Newey spent much of his time living near Truesports in quiet Columbus, Ohio (“the downside!”), while also logging thousands of air miles.

“Ralph Bellamy had done the March 84C Indycar, and I think he was showing less interest in doing the 85C, so Robin asked me to do it. It won’t go down as one of the cars I’m particularly proud of, but it was my first clean-sheet-of-paper car; the sports car had been an adaptation of an existing car. Unfortunately, the 85C was done while commuting, so I didn’t have time to do it properly.”

Nevertheless Newey soon established a reputation as the hottest young engineer in Cart. He continued with Rahal through 1985, before joining Michael Andretti at Kraco the following year, where he oversaw his own 86C design. He then decided it was time to start looking at Formula 1 once more and, in the middle of 1986, joined the Beatrice/FORCE team, initially as race engineer to Patrick Tambay.

“I made it known to Robin [Herd] before the start of the year that I’d like to get into F1. He was tying to get a grand prix team together, but I had an offer from Beatrice through Carl Haas. Robin said he was not ready to do F1 yet, so told me to take it.

“That became my first race engineering job in F1. The timing was unfortunate in hindsight I think my first race was the French GP, and very shortly after that Carl decided to wrap the team up. It was certainly a very talented drawing office. Unfortunately the management style of Teddy Mayer seemed to be to tell Ross Brawn, Neil Oatley and myself that we were the boss, and then let us fight it out. The atmosphere wasn’t as congenial as it might have been, and it isn’t a period I look back on with any fondness. They announced their withdrawal in November which, from a design point of view, was too late to do anything. So I decided to sit back and see what happened.”

Haas invited him to return to the US to engineer Mario Andretti “To have the chance to work with Mario wasn’t something to be turned away easily” but it wasn’t long before another Formula 1 opportunity came along. Wealthy Japanese Akira Akagi linked up with March to set up the Leyton House team, and Newey was asked to join as technical director. It was just what he was looking for.

“It was a good little outfit. Most of the people there had come out of the production side of March, so I knew them. What took me a while to understand was the difference between working for a team which is already organised, and joining a team which is brand new, and building it up. It’s quite different. In designing the 881, where we fell down was in understanding how to manage and grow that team.”

Ivan Capelli and Mauricio Gugelmin were the drivers, and for a while Leyton House really shook the establishment.

“Later Akagi was having financial problems, and we were having a tough time with the car technically. We were using the Southampton tunnel, which had problems with its boundary layer, and we didn’t realise it. So we started developing a car round a wind tunnel which had flow problems, and that led to a very uncompetitive 1989 and first part of 1990. Finally we got our own tunnel, found the problem and changed the aerodynamics for the French Grand Prix.”

In that memorable race, Capelli and Gugelmin ran near the front and, after leading 45 laps, the Italian finished second behind the Ferrari of Prost and ahead of Ayrton Senna’s McLaren. But within weeks Newey had switched to Williams as chief designer. He could have joined Arrows as their technical chief, and for a lot more money than Williams were offering, but he knew he needed experience with a big, successful team. Plus Renault’s engine programme was gathering momentum. Make that another shrewd move.

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