Is Adrian Newey worth £30m a year? F1 drivers explain why he is

From his first job in F1 onwards, it’s clear Newey’s empathy towards the relationship between driver and car has been key in manifesting his insight into how the machine works.

After leaving Fittipaldi, Newey became involved in sports cars and IndyCar through the March team and factory.

Both at Daytona and Indianapolis the young Brit had his first serious success as a designer, his cars winning the Daytona 24 Hours, Indianapolis 500 and IndyCar championship.

IndyCar legend Bobby Rahal, who Newey also race engineered, explained to Motor Sport what made their relationship a success.

“The key is how a driver and his engineer communicate, and Adrian and I were so much in tune, he knew the answer before I’d asked the question,” he said.

“I’d finish his sentences for him, he’d finish my sentences for me. Adrian is a genius, and he’s as competitive as hell, too. All he wants is to win.”

For 1988 Newey made it back to F1 with Leyton House, penning its 881 car. Almost every car Newey has produced, even if beset with reliability issues due to his desire to package things as tightly as possible, has been fast. This was true from the first F1 car he produced, that 881.

“The first time I drove it at Silverstone, I knew it was good,” driver Ivan Capelli said. “It was immediately obvious.”

The Italian scored podiums with that car, and almost won the 1990 French GP in Newey’s CG901.

When Leyton House started to go downhill with money issues, Newey joined Williams, enjoying his first title successes in 1992 with Nigel Mansell and Alain Prost respectively.

The Frenchman has elaborated what makes Newey so effective.

“Adrian is listening to you, asking questions all the time,” he told F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast. “You never have an argument with Adrian. You’re talking with Adrian and he is listening, and then he does what he thinks is the best, but he never tells you what he’s going to do – or if you’re right or you’re wrong. Nothing. Just listening and talking.

“I love that, you know, that is why he’s the best. But also the ways he is working and listening, and it’s fantastic for the engineers working with him, it brings energy and synergy in terms of the brain, that capacity is fantastic.”

Prost’s team-mate would be Damon Hill, and he too would enjoy a world driver’s title in one of Newey’s most successful ever cars in 1996, the FW18.

Hill, always a sensitive soul who needed to be looked after by team members to reach his best, appreciated Newey’s empathetic style – as well as his ability to conceptualise all car components working together.

“Adrian Newey is an extraordinary human being,” he said. “Ultimately, what makes him unique is his personal attention; he has a careful and profound vision of what it means to be a driver driving a car.

“People always say he is the wizard of aerodynamics, and indeed he is: but his great ability is to understand the whole package. He has expertise on the suspension, the engine and, above all, on the driver. He is good at assessing the whole and knows that only by considering everything can the best result be achieved.”

While Hill was always a driver who needed an arm round the shoulder, his 1996 team-mate Jacques Villeneuve was at the opposite end of the scale in being one of F1’s more abrasive characters.

And yet he worked well with Newey too, as Williams claimed another title double with the Canadian in ’97.

“He was amazing because I guess he can visualise the car, he can see it, he can see the airflow,” said Villeneuve. “And he relates to it but he also relates to the driver. He knows it’s not a computer driving. He knows it’s not a robot. So even if on the data, the numbers say this is how quick it could be, maybe a driver cannot drive it. It doesn’t feel natural.

“He’s able to accept that and work around and work with a driver. And that’s why he’s made so many amazing cars. He is definitely the best out there, and he has always been able to reinvent himself.”

It’s Newey’s unstinting appreciation for the driver/car relationship which has been key in marking him out, making his design ideas a reality with success on track.

“Very often, different drivers will be more sensitive to different areas,” Newey has previously told RacingNews365.com. “For example, Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen have one thing in common, in that they are both very sensitive to the tyres. Other drivers, like Mark Webber for instance, were very sensitive to aerodynamic changes, and Max is as well.

“With the driveability of the engine, some drivers are more sensitive than others, so you get different bits of feedback from different drivers and then piece it all together. Theoretically, you could argue that with all the sensors on the car, and all the simulation tools we have to derive from the sensors, then we shouldn’t need the feedback of a human.

“But, the human feedback is vital as the human is the controller, the sensitivity and feeling and ability to express that is key. It is not a machine-driven vehicle.”

It’s not just those from the screaming V10 era who appreciate what Newey could do. The reigning world champion expressed his feelings on Newey’s contribution when it was announced he would be leaving Red Bull.

“I would have preferred, of course, Adrian to stay,” he said. “Because you can always rely on his experience and just as a person he is a great guy to chat to and relate to.

“He is very bright and smart but he would also talk to the driver and interpret that into the car, in terms he would try to imagine himself driving.”