The generalist qualities that made Newey F1’s pre-eminent design guru

A key pillar of Red Bull’s superb performance is aerodynamic design, and that’s little wonder given technical boss Adrian Newey has been playing with the effects of airflow on racing cars since
the early 1980s. The team’s success under revised aero regulations for the current breed of cars is
an exemplar of efficient execution.

Newey’s ability to oversee a project which has suffered very little bouncing or porpoising is of no surprise to fellow 1990s F1 designer Chris Murphy. Although they never worked together, there was a strong connection: Murphy took over Newey’s role as designer at the Leyton House team and inherited one of his most intriguing machines.

In the middle of 1990 the GG901 was uncompetitive but, just as Newey was shown the door, he had in fact come up with an impressive fix. As Murphy attended his first race in the new role, he almost celebrated a maiden win - and the aerodynamic skills of his forerunner became very clear.

“There’s no doubt Adrian is a prolific aero designer,” confirms Murphy. “He did a huge amount of work but back then it was in an unstable wind tunnel which produced unpredictable results. I inherited the car; that event at Paul Ricard where we almost got a 1-2 with Ivan Capelli and Mauricio Gugelmin, it was Adrian’s car. He had just done a new floor, left as his legacy, and it was very good because the car was hugely unstable before that.”

Murphy believes this era was fundamental to the career of a man who is still a key player today.

“Adrian learned a lot from that period, about aero instability from the bottom of the car,” he says. “He understood the need for stable aero, where you have an average value that evens out through the ride height range rather than going for the super peaky thing – which he used to do but had learned wasn’t the right thing to do.

”Team success in F1 depends on whether the designers have been through that understanding and the instability aspect of it. Adrian did because he really pushed the boundaries in the ’90s.”

Capelli came close to victory with Newey's Leyton House CG901 at the 1990 French GP

Photo by: Motorsport Images

The design tools at the engineers’ disposal have moved on hugely since then and Murphy sees many positives as a result.

“Things you can do now with CAD [computer aided design] are extraordinary. From stressing to design to testing to virtual work in terms of simulation, there’s so much you can do that we had to guess.”

As a consequence of this increased sophistication, though, design engineering has become more specialised and intense. Opportunities to learn the complete cycle of racing car design through hands-on engineering are elusive. Learning the full picture was something Murphy was able to develop working for Maurer in the early 1980s.

Insight: How to build a budget F1 car

“It wasn’t just a racing team, it was a manufacturer of F2 cars,” he says, “We were seven people at Maurer and we built seven cars a year. I had various jobs simultaneously – van driver, workshop coordinator, draughtsman, car assembler, race mechanic. You learn an enormous amount about every element of the car. Now that’s missing.”

"Many think team management is what produces results. It isn’t, because it’s all about the design of the car. You have to know what the numbers are and try to get as close to that as you can" Chris Murphy

This was an aspect Newey also took on early in his career when he turned down an offer to be an aerodynamicist at Lotus and moved to March to work weekdays as a draughtsman and weekends as a race engineer in F2. It was a huge part of developing his all-round vision of what it takes to produce a race-winning machine.

“Because of the way Adrian and I grew up in motorsport, we had to do everything,” he says. “Most other current designers have come from a specific discipline but, as a result of his learning, Adrian has a holistic view of a car. I’m convinced that is a better way to run the operation, even though a modern F1 team is now getting so big.”

There’s certainly been a shift in staffing since the ’90s. There were 85 people at Lotus when it folded in 1995, but up to 1000 at various teams now. Yet Murphy feels that the key aspect is to focus on engineering, which is still fundamental to Red Bull’s methodology.

Red Bull's signing of Newey in 2006 acted as the cornerstone to the team's continued success

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

“Many think team management is what produces results,” he says. “It isn’t, because it’s all about the design of the car. You have to know what the numbers are and try to get as close to that as you can. Adrian knows the numbers and anyone ignorant of those numbers needs to find out what they are. That’s what makes a car perform, regardless of management structure.”

Murphy’s respect for Newey hasn’t changed: “I have the highest regard for Adrian as an aerodynamicist. He’s without doubt the best in F1 but I think his early experience has stood him in very good stead – to everyone else’s disadvantage in a way!”

Everyone except maybe Dan Fallows, Aston Martin’s technical director, who had the benefit of working with Adrian for over 15 years...

With 15 years working alongside Newey behind him, Fallows is now leading Aston Martin up the F1 pecking order

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images