During the 2021 F1 summer break, holiday turned to disaster for Adrian Newey after he suffered a horrible head injury while cycling in the Balkans. A potentially fatality for Newey was avoided after the medics took swift action. However, Newey revealed that he faced 5-10% brain damage before he was finally operated upon.
On the Formula for Success podcast, Newey narrated, “Okay, what’s the risk of damage to the eye? ‘Oh, no risk.” But when he quizzed the doctors about any risk of brain damage, they replied, “‘Five, maybe 10 per-cent.’ At which point I told my wife to get me out of there.”
During his time of distress, Newey credited ex-F1 ringmaster, Bernie Ecclestone for getting him admitted to a healthcare facility on priority. Newey revealed that Ecclestone pulled all the possible strings including phoning up the Croatian President at the time.
After hearing of the potential brain damage he could suffer, the 64-year-old panicked and asked his wife to get him out of there. However, Christian Horner, his wife and Bernie Ecclestone soon got to work to ensure that he was operated upon swiftly, in the UK, and ensured his recovery.
Despite life threatening injury, Adrian Newey dominated F1 in 2022 and 2023
Newey suffered that devastating blow to his head after he hit his head on some rocks during a cycling accident in the Balkan region. He swerved to avoid a bunch of children and soon lost control of his bike.
Despite suffering this life threatening injury, Newey got back to the drawing board in no time. The Red Bull design guru was right back to work and created arguably two of the greatest cars in the history of Formula 1: the RB18 and the all-conquering RB19.
While talking to David Coulthard and Eddie Jordan on the podcast, Newey joked that he was already so ‘pig-headed‘ that the doctors could not gauge how much damage he had taken to the brain after his eventual surgery.
Jordan joked about the question and tried to correlate the insane success Red Bull’s RB19 achieved to his accident in 2021. Be that as it may, Newey did admit that it was a near death experience for him. The accident really put things into perspective for him.
