How Adrian Newey Placed a Huge Bet on Red Bull’s Reliability Just to Enable Sebastian Vettel’s Mammoth Domination

Red Bull dominated F1 in the early 2010s by winning four consecutive Drivers’ Championships and four consecutive Constructors’ Championships. Sebastian Vettel was the big beneficiary of Red Bull’s era of domination as he won all four titles. While a lot of credit undoubtedly goes to Vettel and the rest of the team, Aero God Adrian Newey helped the Milton Keynes outfit reach this level.

Newey made a huge gamble with Red Bull’s reliability to help the team get a massive advantage for several years. Among all the cars that Newey helped design, the RB7 was perhaps the most dominant.

The RB7 was so dominant that Red Bull teammates Vettel and Mark Webber clinched staggering 18 pole positions and finished on the podium on 27 occasions. That year the team finished with 650 points and beat second-placed McLaren by a whopping 153 points.

Newey was able to make such a gamble as there was a major rule change going into the 2011 season. This is because the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) was used for the first time this year. While the 64-year-old managed to produce an incredibly quick car that year, he did take a massive risk with reliability.

Adrian Newey made the impossible possible with the RB7

In his book, How to Build a Car, Adrian Newey explained how he went against the suggestion of most designers and designed the RB7 in one of the most unconventional ways. The 64-year-old stated in his book that there was a consensus among most designers about where they should place the battery.

He explained that the other designers believed that the best place to do it was under the fuel tank. However, Newey took an entirely different approach to his competitors. The 64-year-old was keen to place the battery between the engine and the gearbox.

When Newey took this suggestion to his chief designer, Rob Marshall, the 55-year-old was left stunned. In reply, Marshall asked Newey again for confirmation if he understood the 64-year-old’s remarks correctly.

“You want to take the batteries, which we know are a difficult thing to manage, very sensitive to vibration, prone to shorting out, sensitive to temperature – you want to take these and put them between the engine and the gearbox, one of the most hostile environments on the car? Really?” asked Marshall.

However, Newey was adamant. The 64-year-old told Marshall that although doing so may seem impossible, there had to be a way. Eventually, Marshall agreed after Newey presented him with several layouts to explain his plans.

While there were significant problems with this design initially, Newey also managed to eventually make the car more reliable. It was an extremely bold move to place the battery where he did but it paid off handsomely. This is because Red Bull dominated not only the 2011 season with the RB7 but also carried over their domination for another two years.

Red Bull carried over their form from 2011 to 2012 and 2013

In his book, Adrian Newey explained how once Red Bull managed to make the car reliable, they had such a strong package that they were able to carry this same base for the 2012 and 2013 seasons. It is in this manner that one bold move helped the Milton Keynes outfit to establish domination for multiple years.

Mercedes also established a similar era of dominance during the turbo-hybrid era from 2014 to 2021 by winning eight consecutive Constructors’ Championships. Their era of domination also began with a major rule change that was introduced from the 2014 season onwards.

Rule changes are arguably the best time for some of the teams to step up as whenever this happens, the concept of the newer cars is entirely different. And Red Bull proved that the rule changes are the best time to step up by breaking Mercedes’ domination from the 2022 season onwards.

They not only won the Constructors’ Championship last season but also look in a strong position to win it this year. The RB19 has been so dominant that some people have referred to Aero God Newey’s latest design as a ‘spaceship.‘