“Media does a good job of telling everyone that Adrian Newey builds the best chassis”- Mercedes technical director mocks media bias for Red Bull.
Adrian Newey is hailed as the doyen of chassis designing, with teams like Williams, McLaren, and most recently Red Bull has won multiple championships with his designs.
While Newey still gets the praise and many teams copy his chassis design philosophies, Mercedes with an opposite approach from Newwy has managed to secure seven straight Championship wins,
Speaking on it to Auto Motor und Sport as per F1i.com, Mercedes technical director James Allison feels that media has done a great job forming a narrative that Newey is the best chassis manufacturer and everyone shall follow him.
“Because the media does a good job of telling everyone that Adrian Newey builds the best chassis, and that convinced everyone else to copy that concept!” responded a facetious Allison, tongue in cheek.
“In the meantime, our car has flown under the radar, and everyone just believed that it lived off its powerful engine. Our car is also perfect aerodynamically?”
Tough to deviate
Allison later also told why other teams still haven’t copied Mercedes’ approach and why they were still working on Newey’s concepts even in 2020.
“Each team has chosen a path, whether they copied Newey or not,” explained the Briton. If you go from a low rake to a high rake or vice versa, you will get worse results over time. Because you have invested a lot of work in your concept and brought it to an excellent level.”
“Any attempt to deviate from it is, first of all, a step backwards, and it will be a while before you reap the benefits of the other concept. It’s hard to be brave and switch to a new concept. That is why everyone stays with what they have.”
