Red Bull and Max Verstappen’s dominance in F1 is the only complaint the community has against the sport’s current state. Bringing back the V8/V10 engines, reintroducing smaller and lighter cars, and showboating are all topics of discussion among the fanbase, which Adrian Newey speaks about in a recent interview.
Red Bull’s Chief Technical Officer, Newey, has been in F1 since 1988 and has seen the sport change drastically over the years. However, he feels that F1 is in its “most restrictive” era at the moment, with a wide variety of regulations and a cost cap to take care of. These came into effect to make the sport competitive, and the smaller teams should have benefitted from it on paper. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case.
Speaking to Autosport, Newey says, “The competitive order under the cost cap hasn’t changed significantly.” On the other hand, there isn’t much F1 or the FIA can do, unless they start adding fake elements to the sport, to ensure competitiveness.
Entertainment and competitiveness cannot go hand in hand according to the 65-year-old. “Unless you make it artificial, which then starts to become like WWF, then I’m not sure you can,” said Newey. By mentioning WWF, Newey wants to bring the world of pro wrestling into light, where results and incidents taking place on live television are pre-decided.
The sport’s governing bodies and teams have different objectives when it comes to racing. Newey further speaks about both of them.
Adrian Newey on why competitiveness is difficult in F1
Newey gives his insight into why technical regulations exist in F1. According to the Red Bull chief, FIA wants the sport to remain competitive. They want a spectacle, and more fans to tune in which is only possible with good-quality racing.
On the other hand, a team doesn’t care about the spectacle. For a team and its engineers, the biggest objective is to build a car, that ideally dominates the rest of the grid, and helps them win all races in a season. These two things cannot go hand in hand, which is when the Brit talks about the unrealistic possibility of scripting results.
Newey has witnessed several eras, and some of them were incredibly boring from a spectator’s point of view. However, he adds that changes are constant in F1, and with time, the baton of a ‘dominant team’ gets passed on to someone else.
