Adrian Newey is undoubtedly the king of engineers when it comes to F1 car designs. The man with magic in his hands won 25 F1 world championships in his career and is still going strong. However, he was once on the cusp of getting fired from his job. The reason? Painting his office with colors other than the boss’ choice.
Things date back to the days when Newey joined McLaren from Williams in 1997. On his first day in the office of the Woking team, the 64-year-old did not like the color of it, and it felt boring and depressing for him.
Happy 56th birthday to Adrian Newey, whose superb cars won 3 late-’90s #F1 championships for McLaren & Mika Hakkinen. pic.twitter.com/5uwW9laNyd
— McLaren (@McLarenF1) December 26, 2014
Therefore, the British engineer decided to get it painted and use the duck egg blue color, moving away from McLaren’a traditional silver or gray color. As Newey got the color changed, it infuriated McLaren’s then-boss Ron Dennis.
Dennis not only disliked the color at first glance but also showed extreme behavior upon witnessing the color change. He was initially shocked at the changed color of Newey’s office, then got silent and eventually left the place.
As a result of this, Ron Dennis, a man known for his control freak nature initially thought of firing the prized engineer for this. However, he was talked down by his wife and it all calmed down from there on. Now, Adrian Newey revealed about this years later in the recent Formula For Success podcast with David Coulthard and Eddie Jordan.
Christian Horner’s fight with Ron Dennis over Adrian Newey and his drawing board
Adrian Newey is very much a Red Bull Racing faithful now. The cars that he built for this team have dominated the grid. A few examples can be given from 2010 to 2013 and the onset of the 2022 season. All these wouldn’t have been possible if Christian Horner failed to rope in Newey in the Austrian team in 2006.
However, he had to wrestle Ron Dennis before he could bring Newey on board. Most importantly, the British boss also had to go very hard on then-McLaren boss Dennis to bring the drawing board of the 64-year-old engineer.
Notably, Newey, despite living in a digital era still uses hand drawing to draw and design his cars. Therefore, the drawing board is a magic wand for him, and so is the team. No wonder why Horner had to sweat to bring the board to Red Bull.
Happy Birthday Adrian Newey! #F1
Pictured:
McLaren MP4-19 (2004)
Red Bull RB5 (2009) pic.twitter.com/fkgNnhQlJz— Motorsports in the 2000s (@CrystalRacing) December 26, 2018
Speaking about this, the Red Bull boss said in a Talking Bull episode, “He is still at his drawing board, I think it’s probably the only drawing board in Formula 1. I had to argue with Ron Dennis to wrestle it out of McLaren.”
However, Dennis wasn’t a man who would let the board out of McLaren easily. He asked for a donation to charity instead as the return gift for the board. To which Horner agreed.
“He (Dennis) said you need to make a donation to charity if you want that drawing board. So we (Red Bull) made a generous donation to a charity to get that drawing board out,” concluded the Red Bull honcho.
