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

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Recent followers of Formula One will associate him with Red Bull and their all-conquering machines of 2010-13. But one striking aspect of his autobiography is how two of F1’s other great teams, had and blew their chances to hold onto F1’s star designer. He makes no effort to disguise the price paid for that kind of success. “Marigold [one of his former wives] said I was the most selfish person she knew,” he reports, without flinching. This is, after all, a man who estimates he has spent a quarter of his entire life in a wind tunnel and does not appear to regret it.

Adrian Newey has been living and breathing cars since he first started sketching them at the age of 12. The roots of this love were seeing his father pottering around in the garage on some project or other. Drawing them was one thing, what he really wanted to do was build them, so a welding course followed one summer holiday. He tried racing karts, having saved to buy one, but even though he enjoyed it, it was not his thing. He worked hard to get into Southampton to do a degree in mechanical engineering, however, the maths was a struggle. Leaving with a 1st, he wrote to Brabham and a lot of the other teams but nothing seemed to be offered until a chance call from Fittipaldi and his interview consisted of a nervous wait while Harvey Postlethwaite took his Ducati for a test ride. He was in the door. On the technical side, I did learn some new things. I knew almost nothing about the aerodynamics of the car, so even thinking of the underside of the car as a wing was new to me. Still, I thought the technical details of the aerodynamics of the car could have been described in a lot more detail. I feel like I only learned the most basic concepts and only at a high level. I wanted more! And sadly, on the rare occasion when the author did go into more detail, the explanations were poor. Diagrams were sometimes included, but were often more art than aid, too stylized to be helpful in actually understanding anything. Here the author’s sympathies clearly lie very closely with its subject’s, and at times it lapses into simplistic and even slightly chauvinistic commentary on the different attitudes of British and Italian teams. One digression onto the handling of the Ayrton Senna trial really doesn’t belong. if you can come up with a decent concept then develop it year after year until either the regulations change or you realise that it was the wrong route. That, for me, is the most fruitful way to work. I did have a some smaller quibbles as well. There were a few wobbles when talking about women or cultures other than his own, but nothing egregious enough to impact my enjoyment of the book. Ayrton Senna's death also could have been handled better. Although it is clear that the author was emotional about Senna's death, the foreshadowing in the book made me feel he was sensationalizing a story most readers will already know is coming up.Although the Newey-designed Red Bull RB6, RB7, RB8, and RB9 cars won four consecutive titles, his time at Williams was the most successful of Newey’s career. From 1991 to 1997 his cars took 59 Grand Prix wins, 78 pole positions, and set 60 fastest laps out of the 114 races in that period. Punctuating the success was four Drivers’ Championships (Nigel Mansell 1992, Alain Prost 1993, Damon Hill 1996, Jacques Villeneuve 1997) and five Constructors’ Championships (1992 – Williams FW14B, 1993 – Williams FW15C, 1994 – Williams FW16, 1996 – Williams FW18, 1997 – Williams FW19). What We Love About How To Build A Car by Adrian Newey Cary, Tom (21 March 2011). "Red Bull designer Adrian Newey still ahead of the game". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022 . Retrieved 3 October 2013. My suggestion was that we put the battery behind the engine, in front of the gearbox. Figure 1: Placement of the KERS system in the RB7.

Newey is the most successful F1 designer in history but it is three years since one of his cars won a world championship. What we can be sure of is he will have spent the winter examining the regulations all over again, seeking the vital loophole to which he can apply his gift for “disruptive technology” – his term for getting around the rules.On 15 June 2010, during the Sony E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo press conference, it was revealed that Newey collaborated as the chief technical officer for the video game Gran Turismo 5 for the PlayStation 3. A game trailer showed Newey along with race car driver Sebastian Vettel at the Red Bull Technology building in Great Britain in discussion with Kazunori Yamauchi, a Japanese game designer who is the CEO of Polyphony Digital and creator and producer of the Gran Turismo series. [20] The three's collaboration would later lead to the completion of concept cars Red Bull X2010 and Red Bull X2011, which appeared in that game. The following year, despite initial concerns as to the car's superiority compared to the McLaren MP4-27 and a stern challenge from Ferrari's Fernando Alonso in the inferior F2012, [14] [15] Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel once again claimed the championship at a dramatic 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix.

Newey is considered to be one of the greatest Formula One engineers of all time, with his resume boasting more than 150 Grand Prix victories and a record-setting 10 Constructors’ Championships. In 2013, the RB9 along with Sebastian Vettel dominated the field after the summer break to defend both the World Drivers' and World Constructors' Championship in style at the 2013 Indian Grand Prix with Vettel scoring a record-breaking 9 consecutive wins from the Belgian Grand Prix till the season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix. Adrian Newey has had a storied career in Formula One, where he started with March/Leyton House in 1988 before moving to Williams in 1991. Newey was with Williams at the time of Ayrton Senna’s tragic death, before he moved to McLaren in 1997. 2006 saw a switch to Red Bull Racing, and four consecutive Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships with the car he built guided by Sebastian Vettel from 2010 to 2013.

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A true engineering genius, even in adolescence Adrian's thoughts naturally emerged in shape and form - he began sketching his own car designs at the age of 12 and took a welding course in his school summer holidays. Summary: This was an engaging read and I loved the insider perspective, but I'd have liked more technical details. His career at Williams ended with his cars winning 59 race victories, 78 pole positions and 60 fastest laps all from 114 races from 1991 till 1997. These seven years saw four drivers clinch world championship titles.