The university project that Newey’s F1 rivals should not forget

Formula 1 teams were quite open about how they were caught on the hop by the porpoising problems from the first pre-season test.

Indeed, while F1 historians needed no reminding of the phenomenon that blighted F1 cars during the last ground effect era in the early 1980’s, many of those heading up the designs of the 2022 challengers have never really worked on this type of grand prix car before. As McLaren’s James Key pointed out, when asked in Barcelona about the lessons of the old era, he was just 11 when ground effect was banned in F1.

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Ground effect understanding is definitely something that most current tech chiefs cannot call upon previous knowledge of – so virtually everyone is in theory starting from the same clean sheet in understanding. It was fascinating therefore to be reminded this week about one tech chief who not only was around to follow the developments of the last ground effect era in detail, but actually made it a specialist subject: Red Bull’s Adrian Newey.

Making the most of an opportunity to switch off from the outside world for the six hour flight down to Bahrain this week, this writer ploughed through his 2017 autobiography: ‘How to build a race car.’ It's a riveting read, and has some extra special relevance to the 2022 rules.

The book offers a fascinating insight in to Newey's creative genius, as well as some amazing anecdotes that offer a better perspective on his personality, and an approach to life that has worked wonders in F1. One slightly left-field favourite, which also says a lot about the mindset he has taken to interpreting the wording of regulations in F1, goes back to an infamous night when he was expelled from a sixth form college after a wild end-of-term concert. The school had been eager to ban platform shoes – but Newey had found a loophole...

“In an effort to stop the dangerous viral spread of platform shoes, the school had passed an edict banning any shoe under which you could pass a penny on its end,” wrote Newey. “Being a smart Alec, I’d used a piece of aluminium to bridge the gap between the heel and the sole, thus allowing me to wear my platform boots, while still abiding by the letter of the law (no prizes for spotting the connection between that and what I do now).”

Newey is one of few senior F1 technical figures to have experience of working with ground effect cars

Photo by: Mark Thompson

But if you want a slightly more direct connection between Newey’s earlier years and current F1, then some rival teams may not be too heartened to hear about the area of special focus for a final year project for his Aeronautics and Astronautics degree that he took at Southampton University. It was on ground effect aerodynamics.

Having paid close attention as a student to what had been going on in Formula 1, as Colin Chapman unleashed successful ground effect with the Lotus 78 and Lotus 79 cars to set about a rules era that lasted until flat-bottomed cars were made mandatory from 1983, Newey opted to study the topic in great detail. His final year study, and one in which he spent hours working in the Southampton windtunnel, was on ‘ground effect aerodynamics as applied to a sportscar.’

“Truth be told, I put more work into my project than I should have done for what, after all, counted for just 25 percent of the final degree,” he explained. “But I loved doing it. I felt like going back to my roots, like being back at home during the summer holidays, only now I had a windtunnel in which to test my sketches and the models I built from them. It was my school-summer-holiday upbringing applied at university.

Although perfecting aerodynamics and the right mechanical solution for a road-going ground effect sportscar may not automatically transfer to current Formula 1 cars, Newey is open in the book that it gave him a “good understanding of ground-effect aerodynamics”

“The finished article certainly created a lot of downforce. What I’d done was to make use of the Lotus innovation by featuring a skirt that sealed to the ground and stopped the leakage of air, coupled to a full-width underwing, but at the same time I had proposed a mechanical package that would allow this aerodynamic shape.

“True, as a road car, it wouldn’t have been terribly practical due to the fact that in order to deal with the downforce, the car’s suspension would have had to be very stiff and therefore very uncomfortable. So I proposed a variable geometry spring system linked to car speed – what would later become known as active suspension.”

Although perfecting aerodynamics and the right mechanical solution for a road-going ground effect sportscar may not automatically transfer to current Formula 1 cars, Newey is open in the book that it gave him a “good understanding of ground-effect aerodynamics”. And while he never previously got to unleash that specific knowledge on a F1 car (although he did begin work on the rear suspension of a planned 1982 ground effect Fittipaldi before the project got canned), the best technical brains never unlearn things.

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So, while the majority of designers, engineers and mechanics in F1 have come in to this new era with eyes wide open about how best to approach the challenge, Newey will have some pretty good personal background knowledge on concepts, what works and what doesn’t – and especially how best to maximise downforce and handling.

Newey's first F1 experience came with the Fittipaldi team during the ground effect era

Photo by: Motorsport Images

F1’s car designers and engineers are the best in the business. Just because many of those involved on current cars were not unlocking the secrets of ground effect 30 years ago, it does not mean they are automatically on the back foot.

But as rivals pore over some of the choices that Newey has helped make with the 2022 RB18 – the pull rod front and push rod rear suspension, the aggressive sidepods and the bold rear beam wing – you cannot help but wonder how much of those concepts were selected based on all that theoretical understanding done in a Southampton windtunnel nearly 40 years ago.

If there is one specialist subject that many F1 teams probably did not want Newey to have a head start on as the new rules era opens, it was ground effect.

Could Newey's past ground effect insights have a telling impact on 2022 F1?

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images