The Adrian Newey profile: F1's most successful car designer

“The cars at the time had become very uncreative animals,” he said. “In the turbo era the main way to make your car go quick was give it more boost and put bigger and bigger rear wings on — they’d pretty much ignored aero efficiency.

“In many ways it’s [the 881] one of the cars I’m still proudest of, because it completely changed the design direction of F1. Although the Tyrrell of a few years later (1990) was credited with being the first raised-nose car it was actually the March — we raised the nose underneath and tried to make it an extension of the front wing.”

While 1989 proved difficult with reliability issues, Leyton House, Capelli and Newey then stunned the F1 world by almost winning the 1990 French GP.

In Newey’s CG901, Capelli snatched the lead at Paul Ricard on lap 33 and hung on until three from the end, passed by Alain Prost.

It was a final flourish for a struggling team though, and again Newey had to move on as the money ran out, snapped up by Williams.

Adrian Newey’s first F1 race wins and titles with Williams

Newey moved to Williams in 1990 as chief designer under technical director Patrick Head, and for 1991 penned the FW14.

A practice run for two of his greatest cars, the FW14B and the FW15C, the ’91 car still racked up the race wins, largely in the hands of Nigel Mansell.

Though hampered early on by gearbox gremlins, Mansell’s late charge meant he was still a challenge to Ayrton Senna and McLaren in the title race.

1992 was the story of total domination though. So potent a combination were Mansell and the FW14B – using various innovations such as active suspension – that the drivers’ title was wrapped up by Round 11 in Hungary.

It remains one of F1’s most dominant seasons, and was followed by 1993’s FW15C, arguably the most technically advanced F1 car of all time. It featured active ride, power steering, launch control, traction control, ABS and power-assisted brakes, and an early version of push-to-pass.

The car helped Alain Prost take his fourth and final F1 title, the Frenchman clearly relishing his time with Newey.

“I loved talking to Adrian,” he told the Beyond the Grid podcast. “Adrian is listening to you, asking questions all the time. 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.

More F1 success at McLaren

Joining Ron Dennis’s McLaren for the 1997 season, Newey’s first job was to optimise the Neil Oatley-designed MP4/12. The year would prove to be a turning point for McLaren, with both David Coulthard and Mika Häkkinen winning races.

Ironically the car wasn’t good enough to take on his own creation – designed the previous year – which Williams was using, but Newey had an opportunity to turn the tables.

Just like he’d done with Leyton House and then the technical advancements at Williams, Newey saw the new 1998 regulations as a chance to get a jump on the opposition.

F1 stipulated grooved tyres and narrower axles for ’98, and Newey’s McLaren MP4/13 was a winner straight off as Häkkinen and Coulthard dominated the season-opening Australian GP.

The Finn became engaged in a fierce battle for the title with Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher, though Häkkinen’s eight wins would be enough to clinch both the drivers’ and constructors’ championships for ’98.

Häkkinen would snare the drivers’ crown again in ’99, but this would be Newey’s final championship success at McLaren. It lost out to Schumacher and Ferrari in 2000 as the balance of power began to move towards the Scuderia axis of the German driver, team principal Jean Todt and technical director Ross Brawn.

McLaren would still take race wins but, in trying to fight back, hit upon Newey’s one big failure: the MP4/18, which was supposed to race in 2003.

The radical, tightly packaged design featured several F1 innovations, including the blown diffuser later used on Newey’s dominant Red Bull RB7.

Though the car was supposed to take on the Ferrari, its host of reliability gremlins – overheating, floor delamination and spectacular engine failures – meant it never raced.

A version of the MP4/18 would race and win the 2004 Belgian GP, while McLaren and Newey competed for titles again in 2005 with Kimi Räikkönen and Juan Pablo Montoya with the MP4/20 – the season’s fastest car, which again was beset by reliability struggles.

However, again Newey began to feel restricted. Alarmed by the failure of the MP4/18, Dennis and Martin Whitmarsh were reluctant to give Newey the free rein he wanted to create yet more innovative, faster F1 cars.

Young Red Bull team boss Christian Horner sensed an opportunity…

Red Bull: Adrian Newey’s perfect F1 team

F1’s thrusting junior team boss Christian Horner persuaded Newey to make the switch to Red Bull at the end of 2005. The team positioned itself as the world championship’s rock ‘n’ roll outfit, and Newey was attracted by the less restrictive, less corporate atmosphere.

The tech chief later admitted that he expected too much, too soon from Red Bull. The early car designs he came up with were too ambitious for a team still growing and lacking the infrastructure it needed.

Yet again though, Newey spied a broad rule change which could help the team leap up the grid.

For Red Bull, its 2009 RB5 was the car which changed everything. Newey used the new rule set to design a car which by mid-season was the class of the field. Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber would claim the first race wins, and in 2010 the team began an incredible run which saw four consecutive title doubles come its way.

The cars which rolled out each year were development of that original RB5, with the blown diffuser feature being particularly powerful.

A fallow period would then follow from 2014, largely due to the troubled Renault hybrid turbo engine.

Drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen were restricted to largely snatching race victories when the opportunity presented itself, rather than winning on pure performance.

The team would rise once again in 2021, when technical regulations pegged back low-rake F1 cars like Mercedes. This allowed Red Bull, which had an opposing high-rake philosophy, to close in.

Max Verstappen would win his first drivers’ title that year, before again Newey and his design team spied an opportunity.

The new 2022 ground-effect rules were exploited by the team. Once weight and reliability issues were ironed out, Verstappen and co to claimed a dominant title double in both ’22 and ’23.

However, all was not well in Milton Keynes behind the scenes.

Allegations of misconduct by Horner from a female colleague soured the atmosphere in the team, with tension apparently growing between the team boss and Newey.

Rumours began to spread the engineer ace wanted out, and before the 2024 Miami GP it was announced Newey would be leaving Red Bull after almost 20 years.

With still time to effect some change on a team’s 2026 project and the latest set of regulations, it was thought for a while that Newey would join Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari.

The stories gradually changed though as it became clear Aston Martin owner Lawrence Stroll had made a huge offer to Newey, his interest piqued…

Adrian Newey joins Aston Martin as technical partner

It’s now been confirmed F1’s most successful designer in history will join the Aston Martin’s squad’s all-star design line-up assembled by owner Lawrence Stroll, with a host of F1 titles between the engineers involved.

“I am thrilled to be joining the Aston Martin Formula 1 team,” Newey said.

“I have been hugely inspired and impressed by the passion and commitment that Lawrence brings to everything he is involved with. Lawrence is determined to create a world-beating team.

“He is the only majority team owner who is actively engaged in the sport. His commitment is demonstrated in the development of the new AMR Technology Campus and wind tunnel at Silverstone, which are not only state of the art but have a layout that creates a great environment to work in.

“Together with great partners like Honda and Aramco, they have all the key pieces of infrastructure needed to make Aston Martin a world championship-winning team and I am very much looking forward to helping reach that goal.”

“This is huge news,” added Stroll. “Adrian is the best in the world at what he does – he is at the top of his game – and I am incredibly proud that he is joining the Aston Martin.

“It’s the biggest story since the Aston Martin name returned to the sport and another demonstration of our ambition to build a Formula One team capable of fighting for world championships.

“As soon as Adrian became available, we knew we had to make it happen.”

Will more championship’s come Newey’s way? Don’t bet against it.