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

by Adrian Newey

Conversely, you do see cars where there seems to be no continuity. The shape is different from the year before, and different again the year after. The team is confused and doesn’t properly understand the car. A good example of that was the 2011 McLaren, which was a decent car. Then they changed it completely for 2012. It went okay but nothing spectacular. But instead of trying to work out how to develop it, they changed it again the following year, and got completely lost. To me it looked as though, with the 2012 car, they had simply tried to be different but not necessarily for good engineering reasons. Then, for 2013, they just tried to copy various features from along the pit lane: the front end of a Red Bull mated to the middle of a Renault to the back of a Ferrari – a camel. Needless to say, it ran badly. The problem was that they kept changing it without ever fully understanding what they actually had. Darwin was not wrong. Evolution is often the key once the spark of a good direction has been set.