When Adrian Newey Was Promoted From Junior to Senior Aerodynamicist in Just One Day at an F1 Team

Adrian Newey built six Championship-winning cars for Red Bull over the last two decades, and before that, also tasted success with McLaren and Williams. However, his journey began even before, in the year 1980 when he was just a junior at the Fittipaldi F1 team.

Surprisingly, just a day after he joined, Newey became a senior aerodynamicist, something journalist Michael Schmidt revealed on the Pelas Pistas podcast recently. There was a catch, however. Newey was the only aerodynamicist on the team.

Consequently, this promotion in all its reality, did not mean much. But what he went on to achieve thereon in his career, was nothing short of remarkable. Schmidt revealed how it was during those early days that Newey mastered the ground-effect regulations.

️| Lewis Hamilton:

“I know Newey did his thesis on ground-effect floors. It’s no surprise, to be honest.”

“He’s one of the only ones that draw by hand, the design of cars…” pic.twitter.com/wbQY8aFVNZ

— Pitinsider.com (@pitinsider) September 7, 2022

“He has the experience and he has the overall picture, more than anyone else. And particularly, you can see with these ground-effect cars because it was a technology coming back that we had already 45 years ago,” Schmidt explained. “And the physics is the same“.

Due to its rock-solid concept, Newey designed what was arguably the most dominant car in F1 history: the RB19. This car played a key role in helping Max Verstappen secure his third world title and powered Red Bull to 21 out of 22 race wins that season—a true testament to Newey’s genius.

Newey’s knowledge of ground-effect cars helped him tackle porpoising

Porpoising—the bouncing of cars on high-speed straights—was one of the biggest concerns teams faced when the ground-effect regulations were first introduced in 2022. This affected everyone to some extent, but Red Bull was able to manage it quite well because they had the experience of Newey.

That is what Schmidt believes at least. “He was a guy who said, to the engineers at Red Bull, we have to get both the suspension and the aerodynamics right,” the German said. “And I think that’s the Newey factor“.

He added that while other teams focused on ride height to reduce porpoising, which wasn’t wrong, it didn’t address the problem entirely. However, it was Newey, with his years of experience, who understood the importance of also examining the suspension.

Newey’s ingenuity is evident for all to see. Red Bull dominated both the 2022 and 2023 seasons, securing 17 wins in 2022 and an impressive 21 out of 22 in 2023.