Emag wrote: ↑26 Jan 2026, 19:04
I honestly think Newey was soaking up way too much credit at RedBull. I don't deny his legacy and his achievement on the sport, but it's a bit farfetched to believe one individual could single-handedly be responsible for the whole design of such complex pieces of engineering modern F1 cars are. Perhaps his impact was significantly more in the late 2000s and early 2010s, but surely with the advancement of technology, that role diminished over time. He has literally admitted that he still likes to work with a pen and paper. A nice nod to his old-school engineer approach, but there's no way that's not less efficient than a younger talent utilizing modern toolsets at the peak of their capacity.
Newey is gone now and RedBull hasn't lost any of their essence when you look at the car they released for these new regulations. It's aggressive, creative and it looks every single bit like a car people would be writing "Newey designed a masterpiece again" had he remained at RedBull.
And of course I am not implying here "good riddance". Any team would be lucky to have someone like Newey working for them. But I am certain RedBull will do just fine without him.
It is really difficult to pinpoint one individual's contribution for such a big and complex project/organization. Newey did not design the whole car, he admittedly had an advisory role. The actual designing and evaluating is done by the unnamed 'minions'.
High-profile leaders like Adrian are just setting the priorities and focus areas or giving general development directions. How important that is? Sometimes it could be vital, other times can have close to zero effect. Or it even can have negative effect at times. Even Newey had some wrong ideas in his long career.
But even with that I still think it is useful to have an input from someone like him. Maybe it doesn't add much for 1-2 years, but then he helps to set the team on a route which gives them success for the next 2-3 years.
I don't have actual knowledge on that, but I like to think he had a role on Red Bull being almost the only team not really affected by porpoising in the early GE era. He was also told to be really helpful on dialing up the car on track for the actual weekend. Something which Red Bull really seemed to struggle with for a while after his departure.
Point is that this will be never black and white. Red Bull being successful after Newey will not prove he was not part of previous success and vice versa.
