Red Bull’s Adrian Newey: “Cars at this level should be art forms”

As expected, the launch of the RB17, Adrian Newey’s swansong for Red Bull Racing, was the source of much excitement this summer. The engineer, one of the foremost of recent times, took a little time to explain the thinking behind the project to Car Design News.

Car Design News: How did design and engineering come together to realise the car?

Adrian Newey: Before you get into detail, you have to decide on a philosophy and what you’re trying to achieve. In our case, I’ve been lucky enough to drive a lot of different cars over the years from sixties classic cars to Le Mans racers to modern Formula 1 cars.

And I love driving the old sixties cars. But the buzz and adrenaline of driving a modern Formula 1 car is a different level. So I started to think, okay, can we create something where an amateur, who has done a bit of driving, can jump in a car that’s ultimately capable of Formula 1 lap times.

The way I picture that in my own mind is actually someone who decides to learn to play golf. So you go along to your local golf club and you start hitting a few balls and they go flying everywhere, but you enjoy the game.

The challenge becomes not only enjoying the game, but also developing yourself. So perhaps then you have a caddy and off you go on your journey.

The concept here is similar: by having a passenger seat you can have a partner, friend or indeed a coach alongside you. And by designing the car so a relative amateur will be able to enjoy it without it biting him or being too slow.

That’s the philosophy of it. To that goal, we’ve got three different types of tyre: from lower grip with very benign characteristics, to very high grip, but more peaky.

There are adaptive levels of downforce, and with the active suspension it’s much more than just a platform control system. You can adjust the mechanical balance with knobs in the cockpit, depending on which stage the corner is and whether it’s low speed or high speed and so forth. The driver can start to build up their skills without being fearful of the car.

CDN: How does the engineering manifest in the form language of the car?

AN: Obviously we’re free of normal race car regulations. We have been careful to make sure that it complies with LMH (Le Mans Hypercar) safety regulations, but other than that, we’re free.

So it then becomes about packaging the aerodynamics around the normal factors of two occupants, the power unit, etcetera. So you package that as your minimum shape and then you start to develop the aerodynamics around that. I am also a firm believer that, generally speaking, the very good aerodynamic solution will be a beautiful solution.

Indeed, history dictates that if you look at Concord or Spitfire or whatever. They’re all beautiful creations, but none of them are done for styling, they were done for purpose. And that’s the approach we tried to make here.

Now, obviously, the styling aspect is in the eye of the beholder, and indeed, the blue model we showed today, I have mixed feelings about because it’s actually a year old. So I would say that that’s the second evolutionary car. The car that we’re actually manufacturing is its third evolution.

So it’s a little bit smaller than that. It’s actually got the same footprint in terms of length and width as an Aston Martin DBX. A very unrelated car, but just to give a sense of size.

CDN: How important is beauty to a man like yourself?

AN: I do believe that cars at this level should be capable of being art forms, and that’s what I wanted to achieve. It doesn’t need enhancing with flicks and tricks and bits and pieces, because it has a function that gives it the beauty.

CDN: In that regard, how do you work with designers and is there a way to optimise that relationship?

AN: Well, first of all we do everything in house and secondly it’s just trying to keep an eye on everything to make sure that we all steer in the same direction. But I don’t have a magic answer to that, sadly.

CDN: You mentioned Concorde and the Spitfire as being beautiful objects, but what about cars?

AN: The car that I always thought was stunning for its engineering, being so far ahead of the game, but also as beautiful, was the Bluebird record-breaking car from the mid-sixties.

CDN: And what about your car, are you so happy with it?

AN: You are never completely happy, but what I am happy about is that we’ve really taken our time to research the car and go through lots of evolutions and be very self-critical for three years or so.

We are now on the third evolution with the RB17 so I’m actually pretty happy with it.

CDN: There was a great response from the crowd.

AN: There is always a slight nervousness when you unveil something like this, so the fact that everybody seemed to be smiling and look like they liked it, is fabulous.

I now want to just get the third evolution run out because for everybody internally we feel we’ve taken another big step.

CDN: What’s next?

AN: Well, I certainly won’t be involved with another Red Bull two seater. So this is my legacy car.

CDN: It’s not a bad one to sign off on.

AN: No, hopefully not. I don’t see anybody else being able to design a car like this, certainly in the foreseeable future. This concept that you can literally turn up, put the key in the ignition and drive down the pit lane, if it came to it, without any support and go off and do a Formula One lap is something that will be pretty hard for other people to achieve.