Paa wrote: ↑26 Jan 2026, 19:31
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.
1. Newey did get credit for every success at Red Bull -- but that's because of what the media did. It's quite remarkable Red Bull under Horner managed to keep so many good people over the years. They had set up a system that kept their best people while also having Newey in the spotlight for very long and it worked. To put this into perspective, when Horner credited early in 2023 the work of Wache, Balbo, Skinner and Waterhouse (before the RB19 pre-season), the same interview was used as him not giving Newey enough credit by the Dutch media when Newey left. Media narratives are what make everything a Newey masterpiece and a rocketship because it sells and generates clicks.
2. Too early to tell. There appears to be good ideas but we will only know after the first few races where the car really is.
3. Indeed, it's very difficult to say exactly what one single person does/did.
4. McLaren never had bouncing either and out developed Red Bull in suspension design during the same time.
Newey did play an important role in the suspension in the previous era and there's an interview with Mark Hughes where he talks about his role. He had long transitioned into a role where he had become an advisor who would come in and out of the F1 project to give his opinion on things. He was (to the best of my knowledge from listening to many people talk about him in F1) no longer setting the direction itself but more of an oracle to help with certain choices. He was certainly msised at the race weekends however as Red Bull struggled with setups, but that's more nuanced than it looks because the car had fundamentally gotten worse before getting better. Once the Monza upgrade came, at most races the car was okay -- sure hard to get the perfect window to fight with McLaren but with three practice sessions, it was pretty competitive.
In my opinion both of you are right. It is certainly true that no one except Newey (in my opinion at least) got their due at Red Bull regardless of their contribution but maybe that's not a bad thing after all as Red Bull still managed to shine all the light on Newey and keep the team doing what they did best and deliver performance. It's also hard to quantify the impact someone like Newey simply has -- he has been around for long enough that there are subtle points others may miss but he may not. Even with advanced technology, an experienced person can always contribute in a manner that only comes with experience.
The FIA folds on a royal flush.
