Adrian Newey has revealed his sources of inspiration for designing the defining cars of modern Formula 1.
Newey Is rightly considered the defining genius of modern F1 design, with a list of title-winning cars in the back catalogue stretching back decades.
The Williams FW14B, the McLaren MP4/13 and the Red Bull RB19 are proof that Newey has the right stuff when it comes to F1 design.
His talents are heading from Red Bull to Aston Martin as he seeks a new challenge: turning the Silverstone-based team into a winner as its Managing Technical Partner.
Aston Martin is eager to receive Newey when he takes up his role in March and no doubt his brains will be picked apart by CEO and Team Principal Andy Cowell, along with Chief Technical Officer Enrico Cardile.
For those wondering the secret behind Newey’s title-winning design genius, the 66-year-old Briton explained to Auto Motor und Sport.
As it happens, Newey finds that sometimes the best ideas come about when he’s away from his drawing board, doing the most ordinary of tasks instead.
He revealed that “Quite often I find I get stuck, and I walk away, then a new idea might pop up – annoyingly sometimes in the middle of the night!
“I always used to get up [immediately] and scribble it down, then sometimes I’d get up in the morning and [think], ‘What a load of rubbish, that wasn’t worth getting up and spoiling my night’s sleep for,’” Newey continued.
“Now I tend to wake up and take the attitude of, ‘If it was a good idea, I’ll still remember it in the morning’.
“I use that now as a sort of first order filter, if you like. Others are much more short-term, [such as] getting up, going for a walk, getting a coffee…
“I find sometimes stepping away and then coming back is easier. Or it can be in the shower, all the usual things. Those tend to be iterative ones.
“The kind of more first principal ideas, they tend to be, if you like, freer, but almost always unexpected – [in] the shower, taking the dogs for a walk.
“The subconscious never ceases to fascinate me… how you can be doing something completely different, then this sort of thought bubble pops up.”
What Newey gets out of inspecting F1 rivals
Not only does Newey derive his design concepts from subconscious inspiration, but also from analysing his competitors.
Countless times Newey has been spotted parading up and down the F1 grid, famous red notebook in hand, keenly gaining at rival teams’ creations.
“It’s normally to try to look at what other people are up to,” he said of his investigative ways.
“Occasionally, I will then take this back to the guys at the factory and say, ‘Look, I noticed this, it could be worth copying – let’s try it on our car’.
“Other times I’m using it more to sort of say, ‘OK, they’ve gone down this direction, what were they trying to achieve?’
“It’s the sort of target of what somebody might be trying to achieve, rather than the specific detail of how they’ve achieved it, which interests me,” he concluded.
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