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

by Adrian Newey

At Silverstone, Ferrari decided they couldn’t get their exhaust to work, so in typical fashion they decided to try to get ours banned.

Daniel Ricciardo, a graduate of Helmut Marko’s young driver training programme, scored his first-ever championship points at Melbourne. As a team that had now won two championships and was in the hunt for more, we at Red Bull had the pulling power to attract the very best drivers.

During the 2012 season, we got wind of the fact that Lewis Hamilton was unsettled at McLaren. I already knew Lewis from my McLaren days; he was driving in Formula 3000 but was signed to McLaren, and he’d often come to the factory for a go on the simulator. He’s a tremendously friendly guy. True, he’s gone a bit showbiz in recent years, but he’s one of the few drivers who will stop and chat, give people the time of day.

Dietrich takes huge pride in developing sportsmen wherever possible. Helmut’s baby, the training programme, had already produced Sebastian and was now looking like it had another star graduate in the form of Daniel – it has since given us Max Verstappen. At the time of writing, you would have to say the top drivers in Formula One are Vettel, Ricciardo, Verstappen, Hamilton and Alonso – and three of those are a product of Helmut’s scheme, so it’s actually turned out to be phenomenally successful. That’s really the result of Dietrich’s investment in the sport at all levels and Helmut’s management of the driver programme.

Paul Monaghan, my right-hand man at the race track, got his camera out and took a picture of the car from the pit wall, and it showed that although the bodywork was badly damaged it looked safe.

With 13 laps to go, Seb had fought back up to second place and now had Michael Schumacher ahead of him. I must admit, Christian and I were sitting on the wall thinking, Oh goodness, Michael’s going to make his car too wide and difficult for Sebastian to pass. This, after all, was Michael Schumacher: the old enemy. But blow me down, it was the exact opposite. Michael was a gentleman and moved to one side to let Seb past. He clearly did not want to hinder Seb in his championship aspirations.

Christian and I had already been to a rather unusual ceremony in which we were given the keys to Milton Keynes, which I believe means we can now herd our sheep through the middle of the town if we wish. There was a parade, with Sebastian and Mark running the cars around the streets. Roads were closed for what was anticipated to be a big civic event. I said to Mandy, ‘Look, we’re running the race cars through the streets of Milton Keynes; would you like to come along and watch?’ ‘Yes, I’d love to,’ she said, and so, the morning after our third date, both of us nursing hangovers, I collected her and off we went to Milton Keynes. I suppose I hadn’t really thought about the hoopla involved, but, arriving at the factory, we found assorted media and fans assembled outside. As I got out of the car, a few dozen people descended on me to ask for autographs and photos. Mandy was pretty shocked. She looked from the media and autograph hunters to me and then back again, evidently seeing me in a new light. ‘Adrian,’ she said, ‘who are you?’

She knows that when I’m preoccupied and focused on my work, seemingly blinkered, it’s not because I’m being rude and thoughtless it’s because, if you’re going to compete at the top, you have to be that way sometimes. Well that’s my excuse anyway! But I can’t tell you how much I value that, and how helpful it is for our relationship.

Now, to me, what makes Formula One unique compared to other top-level sports is the fact that it’s not just the sportsmen – it’s the sportsmen and the car, man and machine, the technology, the battle of the car-cum-sportsman who’s driving it. And for that reason I think it’s so important that we maintain technical differentiation between the cars, and within the car the engine should not become the dominant differentiator among the top teams. I also think the sport has lost some of its spectacle. These hybrid engines sound flat, they don’t sound exciting. The sound of a normally aspirated V10 made the hair on your skin stand up. People who came to the circuit for the first time tingled with excitement at the noise the cars made. The noise is a very important element that’s been lost, to the point that the support GP2 race, for instance, sounds far more exciting than the Formula One race, which is wrong.

You watch Ayrton manhandling that car around Monaco; it looks brutal and you think, That’s amazing; I could never in a million years do that. You watch a qualifying lap now for pole position, and though you’d be mistaken of course, you might well sit there and think, Yes, with a bit of practice, I could do that.

Well, there were of course family matters to consider: the children, all doing different things, and my relationship with Mandy to take into account. All went into the pot when it came to making my decision. But in work terms, what I returned to was this one simple thought: I just didn’t want to leave Red Bull.

We’d gone from being the paddock joke, the upstart, party-hard fizzy drinks company, to four-time world champions, and we’d done it the old-fashioned way, using principles that to me were in keeping with the true spirit of motor racing.

The cost? £2m. A shame, of course, because it means that the car can only be owned by a wealthy few. For Aston, it’s what’s known as a halo car, so it gets people talking about Aston Martin. It’s an advertisement for their more mainstream products, and a technology demonstrator. For Red Bull it’s our opportunity to show that we can be involved in successful products outside of Formula One; an opportunity to demonstrate that as Advanced Technologies we can take the techniques and methodology we’ve learnt in Formula One and apply it in other areas. If we can do that successfully, then we can grow Advanced Technologies and hopefully tackle other projects in the future.

Thirty-five years later, I can look back on an eventful, fruitful career – one spent designing cars and asking myself the same series of simple questions. How can we increase performance? How can we improve efficiency? How can we do this differently? How can I do this better?