Last Updated on February 3 2025, 2:30 am

Adrian Newey may well be considered to be the all time great in terms of Formula One car design, yet the F1 genius now proves his breadth of skills are limited as he criticises the FIA cost cap which has brought the field closer than its ever been in F1 history.

On a number of occasions last season in qualifying one all twenty cars were within a second of each other. As a random sample this writer selected the Australian Grand Prix from 2010 to compare the Q1 results to the modern era and it revealed that Sebastian Vettel qualified on pole position whilst the 20th placed driver in the session was a whopping was a tenth for being SIX whole seconds slower than the German in the Red Bull car.

Given this was the year when there were three new – but badly underfunded F1 teams – let’s select the same event but ten years ago in 2016. Lewis Hamilton was the pole sitter, and the gap to P20 remained over four seconds.

 

 

 

F1 now closer than ever

Come the big rule change in 2022, early in the cost cap era and Charles Leclerc was on pole for Ferrari and the gap to the final qualified in Q1 was still over 2.5 seconds with two drivers failing to complete a timed lap in the session.

Formula One is certainly better for the cost cap and together with the associated wind tunnel and aero testing handicaps handed down to the teams higher on the pecking order, we now have a number of Q1 sessions last season, where the twenty drivers were separated by less than a second.

Yet Adrian Newey now accuses the FIA of relegating F1 from providing the highest paid job in motorsport, to one where teams are losing their brightest and best to the tech industry and even the World Endurance Championship (WEC).

Now the WEC is enjoying a renaissance which saw a field of 13 different manufacturers enter the 2024 WEC top category –  the hypercar championship – following regulation changes which make the this class of racing far more attractive than in the days when Audi won everything for several seasons, followed by an era where Toyota Gazoo were almost impossible to defeat.

Ferrari modify Hamilton’s car for next test

 

 

 

Newey says F1 cost cap comes with “penalties”

The newly appointed Aston Martin managing director partner of all things technical at the Silverstone based team speaks to German publication AMuS about the negative impact of the F1 cost cap, whilst suggesting it has in some way been a necessary evil.

“There needs to be a way of controlling the cost for teams, or certainly the benefit from spending more in Formula 1 to make it simply an arms race where the team with the biggest budget wins – that I fully agree with,” Newey says. “The cost cap, though, does come with a lot of hidden penalties, one of which is it actually means Formula 1 is no longer the best-paid industry.”

Newey describes how when the cap was introduced, Red Bull and a number of the other larger teams were forced to make redundancy’s as a number of the teams had ballooned to c. 1500 personnel. “So for instance, at Red Bull, at the start, if we lost people, it would almost invariably be to another F1 team.

Ford no longer Red Bull ‘sponsor only’, now adding cutting edge manufacturing techniques

 

 

 

F1 losing its brightest to tech companies

“Now we’re losing people to tech companies because they pay better. We’re losing people to WEC teams because they pay better. We’re struggling to get graduates because Formula 1 can’t afford to be the best-paying industry anymore, so it has a lot of, let’s say, unexpected penalties to it.”

Of course Adrian’s gripe is nothing new given the sport’s most successful engineer has railed against the ever tightening car design regulations, which have become more restrictive with each passing year over the last two decades. Newey argues this means the scope for creative thinking has significantly diminished which he believes makes F1 all the poorer for it.

“But what it does mean is that you’ve effectively now got an engineering budget, and therefore the fear that spending more will mean you’ll disappear has theoretically disappeared, at which point, surely you free up the regulations rather than make them ever more restrictive. But unfortunately, it’s not what’s happening.”

“When I first got into Formula 1, I had on my desk at work a copy of the 1973 Technical Regulations, and it’s about three or four pages… now we have this bible and that’s before you put all the technical directives in! It’s so prescribed now, and I think it’s a shame.”

Newey opens up about leaving Red Bull

 

 

 

 

Newey is tapping into a paddock debate over the impact of the balance between financial stability and the opportunity to deliver cutting edge innovation, yet at the end of the day people watch Formula One to see competitive racing. The days of the Schumacher era when legendary commentator Murray Walker would explain how one driver had made just up under on the last lap, a tenth of a second to close the five second gap to the car ahead was as exiting as it got.

The cost cap and associated handicap system to regulate aerodynamic testing time has indubitably narrowed the gap between the front of the field and teams further back on the grid. Yet Newey’s claims that the brightest and best are either leaving or never joining Formula One is dramatic to say the least.

Formula One teams have grown exponentially in terms of the number of their personnel in an extraordinary fashion over the past two decades, and it is this which is diluting the pot from which to pay the 1000+ staff within the top teams. Indycar, WEC, Formula E and even NASCAR have far smaller numbers of personnel, yet their sports remain competitive and the best people continue to rise to the top.

Russel HUGE crash forces Melbourne circuit changes

 

 

 

F1 employs more aero staff than the entire global aviation industry

Whilst Newey is correct in that F1 should be attracting the brightest and best engineers in the world, the sport still currently employs more aerodynamic engineers than the entire global airline industry. Maybe the answer is the focus should be quality over quantity in terms of personnel, but to reduce headcount in any organisation requires a particularly ruthless CEO/CFO.

And whilst a degree of freedom has been lost to the F1 boffins who design the incredible racing prototypes which the teams deliver year after year, F1 retains its DNA of not being a spec series like Indycar and others. To that end there is always a trade off between opening the floodgates to see which team of engineers is the brightest and best and delivering great racing, which is why F1 is in such rude health. 

FIA late change of mind infuriates Red Bull 

 

 

 

 

Ferrari boss explains why early 2025 season form will decide the F1 championships

Formula One is is on the brink of exciting times ahead. After the utter dominance of Red Bull Racing in 2023, the Milton Keynes based team faltered last season squandering an early season big advantage only to lose the coveted constructors title to McLaren who last claimed the trophy in 1998.

McLaren delivered a miraculous 164 points turnaround from the 2024 Austrian Grand Prix to the chequered flag in Abu Dhabi, where they finished a whopping 77 points ahead of the former world champions.

Yet late in the year it was Ferrari who were the form team, having lost their way during the late European season of racing. Coming into the final two triple header weekends, the Scuderia were 75 points behind the Woking based F1 team, only to finish just 14 points adrift of McLaren in the final team standings…. READ MORE