How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Formula 1 Designer

by Adrian Newey

And so here I was, sitting in the car at the Paul Ricard circuit in the South of France, absorbing from a driver’s angle all the things I’d paid so little attention to as an engineer: the procedure for the ignition sequence; the whine and howl of the engine – a feeling of being cocooned but alone in the cockpit, as though the sheer volume and bone-shaking drama of it is physically holding you in place.

my engineer’s brain began to think about that redundant left leg, and whether it could be positioned differently to allow a narrower and more aerodynamically efficient front to the chassis, I lost a little focus. Before you knew it, I’d spun the FW15.

it’s actually relatively easy to drive a Formula One car. Throttle, Green, Green, Amber. Change. Brake, turn the wheel, point it at a corner, accelerate. Simple. It’s like an arcade game. The challenge is doing it faster than everybody else without losing control. That is an entirely different level.

‘most of these boys are here not because they want to be, but because their dads want them to be.’

Thus, the aim of the chassis designer is to: One: ensure that the tyres are presented to the ground in an even and consistent manner through the braking, cornering and acceleration phases. Two: ensure the car is as light as possible. Three: ensure that the car generates as little drag as possible. Four: ensure that the car is generating as much downforce as possible in a balanced manner throughout the phases of the corner.

A Porsche 911 is a horrible car from a vehicle dynamics point of view. It’s all to do with the fact that the engine is hung out the back behind the rear axle. Owners who take early models on tracks often spin them. Once that heavy rear starts coming round, it’s like having a sack of coal in the boot: when it starts moving, it’s difficult to stop it.

Just as I hate it when drivers forget that they are an employee and start blaming the team when things go wrong, the reverse is also true: you’re a team. You stick together.

a creeping regulatory disease in our sport: ever-more regulations that prescribe in great detail exactly where you cannot have bodywork, where you must have bodywork, even in some areas exactly what shape it must be.

Rightly or wrongly, there’s a feeling that the sport needs Ferrari, and that its credibility partly rests on their involvement.

I’ve never done the job for the money; I do it for the passion. Even so, we all have an ego, and one way of measuring your success is by how much you’re paid. If you can command decent money, then why not?

meetings should only be deemed a success if a clear set of ideas and actions came from them; they should not be used simply to read out reports that should have already been read prior to the meeting.

we crossed the Atlantic to a new track in Austin, Texas – our first return to America in some years. The race proved to be remarkably popular, with sell-out grandstands and a great atmosphere.

a sport I’d loved, not always for what it was, but for what it had the potential to be: the total synchronicity of man and machine, the perfect combination of style, efficiency and speed.