Adrian Newey

Adrian Martin Newey, (born 26 December 1958) is a British Formula One engineer.

He is the chief technical officer of the Red Bull Racing F1 team.

Newey has worked in both Formula One and IndyCar racing as a race engineer, aerodynamicist, designer, and technical director; he has enjoyed success in both categories.

Newey is regarded by many to be one of the greatest engineers in Formula One history; his designs have won numerous titles and more than 200 Grands Prix.

Newey is also one of the most successful designers, winning twelve Constructors' Championships with three different Formula One teams, and with seven different drivers winning thirteen Drivers' Championships driving Newey's designs.

He was born in Colchester, Essex, England, on 26 December 1958, the son of Richard and Edwina Newey.

His father was a veterinarian and his mother was an ambulance driver during the Second World War.

He attended Repton public school alongside Jeremy Clarkson.

Newey gained a first class honours degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Southampton in 1980.

Immediately after graduation he began working in motorsport for the Fittipaldi Formula One team under Harvey Postlethwaite.

Through the 1980s and into the 1990s, Williams F1 was a top running team, and technical director Patrick Head wasted no time in getting a contract signed.

In 1981, he joined the March team.

After a period as a race engineer for Johnny Cecotto in European Formula 2 Newey began designing racing cars.

His first project, the March GTP sports car, was a highly successful design and won the IMSA GTP title two years running.

In 1984, Newey moved to the March Indy car project, working as designer and race engineer for Bobby Rahal at Truesports.

Newey formed a close friendship with Rahal, which would impact their careers some fifteen years later.

Newey's designs also won the 1985 and 1986 CART titles.

Newey's March 85C design won the 1985 CART championship in the hands of Al Unser, and the 1985 Indianapolis 500 with Danny Sullivan.

In 1986 Newey moved to Kraco to engineer Michael Andretti's car, while his March 86C design won the CART title and 1986 Indianapolis 500 with Bobby Rahal.

At the end of 1986 Newey joined the Haas Lola F1 team in an effort to improve its fortunes, but the team withdrew at the conclusion of the 1986 season.

After a spell at Newman-Haas in 1987 working as Mario Andretti's race engineer, Newey was re-hired by March, this time to work in Formula One as chief designer.

Newey's first F1 design, the March 881, was far more competitive than many expected, with Ivan Capelli finishing second in Portugal, and even passing Alain Prost's McLaren-Honda turbo for the lead of the Japanese Grand Prix briefly on lap 16.

As March became Leyton House Racing in, Newey gained promotion to the role of technical director.

In France Capelli finished second after a late pass by Prost's Ferrari, but that proved to be the year's bright spot, with the team's results declining.

In the summer of 1990, Newey was fired, although he soon found another role.

Newey later said: "I was fired but I'd already made up my mind I was going – because once a team gets run by an accountant, it's time to move. Your self-confidence does suffer but Williams had approached me."

With a vastly superior budget, drivers and resources at his disposal, Newey and Head rapidly became the dominant design partnership of the early 1990s.

By mid-season 1991, Newey's FW14 chassis was every bit a match for the previously dominant McLaren, but early season reliability issues and the efforts of Ayrton Senna prevented Williams team leader Nigel Mansell from taking the title.

His career at Williams ended with his cars winning 59 race victories, 78 pole positions and 60 fastest laps all from 114 races from 1991 till 1997.

In 1992, there would be no problems, and with dominance of the sport not repeated until the Ferrari/Schumacher era, Mansell took the drivers' crown and Newey secured his first constructors' title.

1993 delivered a second, this time with Alain Prost at the wheel of the FW15C.

1994 saw a rare dip in performance for Newey-designed cars and the team and drivers struggled to match the Rory Byrne-designed Benetton B194 for pace and reliability.

Disaster struck at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix with the death of Ayrton Senna who had joined Williams that year.

A late-season charge, helped by a two-race ban for Schumacher, enabled Williams to claim their third straight constructors' championship.

However, Williams were unable to take a third consecutive drivers' title, and with possible manslaughter charges for Senna's accident in prospect, cracks began to show in Newey's relationship with Williams team management.

By 1995, it was clear that Newey was once more ready to become technical director of a team, but with Head a share-holding founder of Williams he found his way blocked.

Loss of both drivers' and constructors' titles to Benetton in 1995 saw further distance put between Newey and Williams, and by the time Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve secured both titles in 1996 Newey had been placed on gardening leave prior to joining McLaren.

After designing championship-winning Formula One cars for Williams F1 and McLaren, Newey moved to Red Bull Racing in 2006, his cars winning the Formula One drivers' and constructors' championships consecutively from 2010 to 2013, the drivers' championship in 2021, and both championships in 2022 and 2023.

The Newey-designed Red Bull Racing RB19 is the most dominant Formula One car in history, winning 21 out of the 22 races (95.45%) it competed in.

Newey was asked to leave Repton at the age of 16 after an incident at a Greenslade concert at Repton's 19th-century Pears School Building organised by the school's sixth formers, where he pushed up the sound levels on the band's mixer, cracking the building's stained glass windows.