Revealed: What sets Adrian Newey apart from the rest ahead of huge $100m move

David Coulthard knows Adrian Newey better than most and has pinpointed what sets the famed F1 car designer apart from the rest.

The future of Adrian Newey, and which team he might go to once he departs Red Bull next year, is the subject of intense speculation akin to what many World Champion F1 drivers would have to contend with.

David Coulthard on what makes Adrian Newey special

It’s no surprise that Newey is generating this much furore about his future, given the immediate impact he can have on a team’s competitiveness – as seen when he joined Williams and McLaren during the 1990s.

He was also instrumental in building up Red Bull into the force it has become, having joined the Milton Keynes-based squad during the mid-2000s in its formative years, and has overseen the car designs which have led to six Constructors’ Championships and seven driver’s titles across Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen.

David Coulthard was the first lead driver for the Red Bull team, almost exactly 20 years ago, and he was part of the effort to coax Newey across from McLaren to Red Bull in 2006.

But that wasn’t the first time Newey and Coulthard’s paths crossed; Coulthard had raced for McLaren during the Newey years and, before that, had been part of the dominant Williams squad that Newey oversaw alongside Sir Patrick Head.

“I’ve worked with Adrian since I was a test driver for Williams when I was in my early twenties,” Coulthard told the Dutch subsidiary of Motorsport.com.

“Then, of course, I also worked with him at McLaren.”

This long, long association between driver and engineer has given Coulthard insight – moreso than most – into why Newey is so special as an engineer, and the Scot reckons it’s actually quite straightforward.

“Adrian is clearly a talented designer, but what sets him apart from the rest is that he thinks like a racing driver,” he said.

“He also races as a hobby, of course. Adrian does not drive lap times that would instill fear in Max Verstappen, but he did participate in the Historic Grand Prix in Monaco earlier this year.

“As a result, he knows exactly what a driver is talking about when he talks about understeer when he gets on the gas or about the transition from understeer to oversteer when exiting a corner. Adrian himself was also a racing engineer, so he actually has the whole package.”

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Coulthard believes that the fact Newey races and has also worked as a race engineer, stemming back to his days in IndyCar in the 1980s, gives him a much broader sphere of experience to draw upon, compared to many of his contemporaries.

“Nowadays they are all specialists, people who are material engineers, for example,” he said.

“They know exactly which materials certain parts need to be made of. That is their skill set, but they are not necessarily racers. They are pure engineers.

“Nowadays, you need a lot of people who are specialised in a certain role, but Adrian’s leadership comes from understanding the whole process: from drawing up the concept to building it and putting it on the track to driving it. I think that gives him a competitive advantage over others who may be academically much higher ranked.

“Adrian may not have the academic CV that scares a lot of engineers, but that is another example of theory versus practice. You need knowledge from practice to ultimately achieve good performance.”

With Newey seeing out his days at Red Bull on a soft gardening leave that sees him still occasionally on the ground at races for the team despite his primary focus now being on the Red Bull Technologies-developed RB17 hypercar, which is expected to begin production next year, the F1 world is agog to see what comes next for the 65-year-old.

The British engineer has hinted at wanting to take a break from F1, saying in an interview in Miami that he’s “a bit tired” after nearly 40 years at the front of motorsport.u

But the latest speculation has placed him at Aston Martin as Italy’s AutoSprint has suggested Lawrence Stroll has signed him on a $100 million, three-year deal, having beaten Ferrari to his services.

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