Last Updated on January 30 2025, 11:03 am

Adrian Newey called time on his longest run with a Formula One team during his long an illustrious career as an F1 car designer. After much speculation, Newey announced his departure from Red Bull Racing in May 2024 amid speculation of a rift between him and Christian Horner.

Whilst the reason behind the supposed trouble relationship was never properly explained, Horner and Newey were rarely see together during the entirety of last season but of course the expected platitudes were exchanged when Newey made public his deacons to ‘take a sabbatical.’

F1 historians will know Newey used a similar phrase when he decided he was leaving McLaren, then within weeks it was announced he would be joining Red Bull Racing back in 2006. Similarly this time around the ‘sabbatical’ was short lived once Lawrence Stroll had rolled out the red carpet and his bank account to secure the services of F1’s most successful designer.

 

 

 

Newey suspension design the source of the RB20 problems

Again those who’s F1 interest precede F1’s Netflix Drive to Survive, will know that Newey was a young man making his way in F1, when ground effect cars were first conceived. This gave Red Bull racing an advantage in 2022, when the FIA sanctioned the use of that technology once again.

In an interview with Sky during the 2023 season, Newey revealed he had not been responsible for the complete design of the RB18 for 2022, but had focused on the front end and the suspension geometry. From his previous experience with ground effect cars Newey understood one of the problems they faced back in the late seventies was porpoising caused by an unstable platform and the air seals breaking in the underfloor Venturi tunnels.

To this end Adrian set out to deliver as stable a platform for the RB18 as possible. This meant anti-dive and anti-squat mechanisms to prevent the car from dipping under breaking, or sitting down on the back wheels under acceleration. Also the classic Newey Red Bull rake design, where the rear is higher than the front of the car, was gone and in its place the most stable of platforms amongst the teams designs of 2022.

Yet during the 2024 season, it was the Newey designed suspension which was creating enormous headaches for the team as the car bounced violently off the kerbs at circuits where their design sees them taller than elsewhere. Monaco was a classic example as Verstappen despite all his skill and genius could not get his RB20 to ride the kerbs without being kicked back onto the circuit.

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Red bull issues start late 2023

Other street circuits like Baku and Singapore also proved to be the most difficult weekends for the world champion who was battling to retain his crown during the latter parts of the season.

Now Newey has spoken about the troubles Red Bull faced last year  which many believed stemmed immediately following his departure from the team. “Obviously part of it was McLaren in particular and Ferrari as well developing their cars and doing a very good job of their cars,” reports German publication AMuS.

“But I think Red Bull, from what I could see, the ’24 car and through the very last stages of ’23 as well was, I would say, starting to become more difficult to drive. Of course Max could handle that. It didn’t suit him, but he could handle it, Checo couldn’t. So we also started, through ’23, to see more of a difference in performance between the team mates, Max and Checo,” Newey reveals.

The poor drivability continued to develop in 2024 yet the car remained quick enough to outclass the opposition, yet Newey claims he was concerned about the development direction as late as the autumn of 2023.

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Red Bull design team criticised by Newey

“It’s something I was starting to become concerned about, but not many other people in the organisation seemed to be very concerned about it,” states the new Aston Martin director of all things technical. And is this short statement is revealed the nature of the relationship Newey had with the Red Bull design team since he relinquished his role as technical director in 2018.

Adrian Newey prior to the arrival of Honda had become bored with F1 mostly due to the underpowered Renault unit not serving his car designs well. He was allowed to work part time in F1, come and go and he pleased together with working on other projects like the Valkyrie and the latterly the RB17.

This is evident in the slightly bizarre comment to follow: “From what I can see from the outside, but I don’t know, the guys at Red Bull – this is no criticism – I think they just, perhaps through lack of experience, kept going in that same direction. And the problem became more and more acute to the point that even Max found it difficult to drive.”

But in a way Newey is correct as Max became more and more vocal during the European summer racing season about the handling problems and the narrow window of setup the team had to find each weekend.

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Set up simply “optimising the car”

“Set-up can mask problems to an extent, but the problem is still there,” adds Newey. “To me set-up is more simply optimising the characteristics of the car and of course, to an extent, driver, but I think that’s over-egged. It’s mainly to complement the characteristics of the car and then of course circuit-to-circuit variation, depending on the nature of the circuit.”

All of the F1 teams have suffered during this ground effect design era with setbacks to their car designs and in season development. The problem being as they find more downforce from ground effect, this the becomes peaky and the car can break away at the slightest unsettling of its balance. This is what Ferrari believe caused Hamilton’s crash yesterday in Barcelona.

“A ground effect car which doesn’t have sealed skirts like the old sliding skirt cars is always going to be very susceptible to aerodynamic instabilities,” Newey adds. “Because you start to generate these very low pressures under the floor but you have all this leakage coming in from the side, and that creates potentially some quite strong losses and problems as you get closer and closer to the ground.

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Is Newey venting?

“But equally they are a good way of creating downforce. You’re always trying to trade downforce versus consistency. It’s a difficult problem.”

Its easy to be wise after the event and Newey’s observation of Red Bull’s progress last season is hardly breaking news. Further, the problems the team faced with the RB20 were ‘baked in’ in terms of the car’s fundamentals and as other teams have found in recent years, often these issues can only be resolved with the new car design for the following season.

The fascinating aspect this Newey interview is his open and honest criticism of the group of design engineers with whom he worked for so long. Techies are not known for the love of ‘baiting their rivals’ yet this feels like Newey is somewhat venting his spleen somewhat – in a very Adrian Newey understated fashion.

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Ferrari re-train Hamilton on braking technique

ewis Hamilton is settling into Formula One life with Ferrari but his latest outing testing in a previous year’s car ended badly. Fred Vasseur has planned an extensive familiarising programme from the seven times world champion which included a run last week in Fiorano and three days of testing this week at the Circuit de Catalunya.

The hope is by the time the team’s arrive in Australia for the first round the 2024 F1 season, Lewis will feel at home in the Ferrari garage and that he and his engineers will have developed a solid relationship meaning the focus is on the performance of the car, rather than struggling through communication issues.

The ex-Mercedes driver was allegedly offered the home of Enzo Ferrari as his residence when spending time in Italy, if the Italian media are to be believed, although Hamilton refused to confirm this. Ironically, Hamilton’s testing of previous Ferrari’s has been limited by a protest made by his own team who were previously unhappy with others using this allowance to extremes…. READ MORE