Adrian Newey

Adrian Newey OBE

Considered by many to be the best car designer currently in F1 and in my opinion certainly rivalling some of the all time greats such as Colin Chapman.

Newey graduated from the University of Southhampton in 1980 with first class honours in Aeronautics and Astronautics. He went on to work for the Fittipaldi F1 team before joining March in 1981.

He was a successful designer from the word go. His first race car design was the March GTP sports car which won the IMSA GTP title two years running. In 1984 Newey design the March IndyCar his design proving highly competitive taking 7 wins including the coveted Indy 500. His IndyCar success continued in 85 with the March 85C taking the title.

Leaving Indycar to move back to Europe and F1, Newey Briefly worked for Force F1 team before rejoining the March team now as F1 technical director. Sadly his cars form declined after some initial promise in the late eighties until he was fired in 1990.

Patric Head wasted no time in snapping up Newey for the Williams Team in 1990 and by the end of 1991 the Williams FW14 was a front running car, on par with the championship winning Mclarens of that year.

In 1992 Newey took his first F1 constructors title with Williams and Mansell took the Drivers title. The winning form of his earlier career was back. 1993 the FW15c again dominated taking another constructors title. The start of 1994 the Williams was off form. Chasing active suspension technology caused the car to behave unpredictably, the drivers hated driving it even though it was fast. Then disaster struck. Sennas death at Imola and rumours of possible manslaughter charges started to cause cracks in Neweys relationship with the team management. Despite this Neweys wins kept coming taking the constructors yet again helped in part by a 2 race ban for Schumacher.

In 1995 Newey had been denied the technical directorship he wanted, this coupled with the loss of both titles to Benetton saw the relationship at Williams get frostier. By the time both titles were won in 1996 Newey had already signed for Mclaren. Frank Williams to this day regrets letting Newey go and with good reason, the Williams winning form was only able to continue for 1 year after Neweys legacy, they have never had such success since.

Unable to influence the Mclaren in 1997 his first car was to be design for 1998. Both titles followed. These would be his last for the next 11 years.

Leaving Mclaren at the end of 2005, Newey took on the challenge of joining a new team Red Bull Racing. With improving form in the constructors with a 7th, 5th, 7th and then in 2009 2nd. The Redbull in 2010 was the car to beat. Newey was back ,with the Redbulls taking both titles from his old team McLaren. in 2011 the RBR totally dominated taking Andrian Neweys Championship wins to an impressive 7 F1 titles and 10 total motors sport titles.

He is a man that has won 1 in every 3 constructors championships that he has designed a car for. The stats speak for themselves.
 
McLaren claimed they were outbid for his services by RBR, but Horner stated at the time salary was not the tipping factor. I think Newey had been part of the F1 circus long enough, he knew he had more talents than were required to be a mere aerialist. He wanted to be a ringmaster, too. I think he wanted a degree of control -- perhaps over aspects of the racing programme not normally considered the TD's bailiwick -- that none of the more established teams were willing to concede.

I do not think Dietrich Mateschitz brims with patience. I'd imagine he looked at his team's predicament after its second season (having come 7° in WCC) and was willing to spend cubic Euros to accelerate his program's development. So he weighed the risks he would assume by hiring an Adrian Newey but giving him too much authority against having no Adrian Newey at all, and he decided in favour of the former. If my theory is true, it was a gamble that paid off pretty well.


The earliest car of his i'm familiar with is the 1990 Leyton House, which to my mind is one of the most beautiful F1 cars ever, along with the Ferrari of the same year. I remember France 1990 when Capelli and Gugelmin were running 1st and 2nd for ages until both retired...
...Incidentally, it also featured an exhaust-fed diffuser and had an extremely narrow engine cover and rear bodywork, something which he still incorporates into his designs today.

marchcg891blowndiff.jpg


Maurício Gugelmin shares the secret of the March CG891's success at the entrance to the first corner of the 1989 GP of France. Not so beautiful from this angle, but much more revealing.
 
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The flat floor with exhaust exiting/blowing through the diffuser venturi appeared sometime late 1984/85. Not sure who started the trend (I'm going to find out:thinking:) but in the '85 season Williams, Mclaren and Ferrari had incorporated the design.

Edit: A certain Gordon McCCabe tells us in his blog that "Conventional wisdom holds that Formula One's first exhaust-blown diffuser appeared on the Renault RE40 in 1983."

http://mccabism.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/first-ever-exhaust-blown-diffuser-in-f1.html

He cites an Edd Straw article that states Renault’s Jean-Claude Migeot conceived the exhaust-blown diffuser in 1982 and it was first seen on the Renault RE40 at the 1983 Monaco Grand Prix.
 
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F1 Fanatic has a bit about the RE40 at Goodwood 2012: "...[T]he team pioneered an innovation which has recently come back in vogue: directing its exhaust gasses into the diffuser to boost downforce."

But as you can see in this photo, it didn't blow under the floor:

800px-Alain_Prost_F1_RE40_p1040464.jpg


The big pipe is turbine exhaust and the small pipe is waste gate exhaust. The V-6 used twin turbos -- an individual blower for each bank of cylinders -- so there was an identical set-up on the opposite side. The function would appear to be that it adds energy to the airflow on the low pressure side of the rear wing.
 
I would assume that is the pre-1983 Monaco GP configuration. Obviously Straw and McCabe may be wrong and perpetuating a myth. However, I suspect that they are correct since the teams that were using it in 1985 most likely "borrowed" the idea when they saw it work on the Renaults. That suggests that it must have been in use in 1984 at least. So who am I to argue with Straw and McCabe?:thinking:

Edit: In order to avoid derailing the thread and bring it back to something closer to the OP I will add this:

"Newey is brilliant but he hasn't invented and doesn't invent everything!":D
 
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Someone "invented" it, and the earliest use of it I can find firm evidence of is in the Newey-designed March CG891.


That is a bit cheeky, actually, since I would argue the EBD does not rise to the level of an 'invention.' It is more an adaption to F1 of devices used for some time in aviation, chiefly the blown flap. Then again, I doubt there is any aspect of aerodynamics used in F1 (or motor racing in general) that hasn't first passed through the bowels of aviation.

That the RE40 isn't blowing under the car does not mean it isn't blowing the diffuser. The 2013 cars also are blowing the rear diffuser ...from above. They didn't term this Coandă effect in 1983 but that undoubtedly is what is going on with the RE40 in the configuration shown. The Coandă exhaust serves to equalise the velocity of the air emerging from underneath the car, improving wake infill and pressure recovery. So even as shown, it does meet the broad definition of blowing the diffuser.

There are quite a few period photos of the RE40 on the Interwebs, and all of them (I can find) feature those "bat wing" deflectors ahead of the rear wheels. However, only one identifies itself as post-Monaco, that one being at Zandvoort. There also are assorted recent videos purporting to be of Prost's RE40 on YouTube which clearly show the same exhaust arrangement as in the photo above. So for that car ever to have had its exhausts routed underneath, that would appear to mean they left the bat-wings in place after the change, and they reverted to the earlier configuration when the car was put out to pasture.

But as far as blowing the diffuser from underneath, I can't be so dismissive of the RE40's successor, the RE50. This snap is purported to be from Brands Hatch, 1984:

renault_re50__great_britain_1984__by_f1_history-d5f7ktf.jpg


There has to be an exhaust exit in there somewhere, but I don't see it, unless that is what the square protuberances underneath at the extreme edges of the chassis are. But that seems an unlikely location (and configuration) for blowing a diffuser. Which leaves the possibility that the exhaust exits could be further forward on the floor of the car and out of view from this perspective.

BTW, I know from other (head-on) pics of this car that the vertical appendages adjacent the rear wheels -- which are reminiscent of the exhaust deflecting bat-wings visible on the RE40 -- are in fact brake cooling ducts.
 
Indeed. "Over the diffuser" blowing could be credited to McLaren: http://mccabism.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/mclaren-mp41b-exhausts-in-detail.html

I did try a hint but apologies if I wasn't clear enough ... Perhaps a better place for a technical discussion would be one of the technical threads? I suggest using one of these:
http://cliptheapex.com/threads/inside-an-f1-car.6437/
http://cliptheapex.com/threads/2012-regulations-regarding-exhaust-positioning-and-blowing.3242/
http://cliptheapex.com/threads/exhaust-solutions-legal-or-not.4618/
http://cliptheapex.com/threads/f1-tech-files.4701/
 
Is anybody really surprised that the F1 circus gets sent away on a month's holiday, everybody comes back, and then Mr. Newey makes them all look foolish for 3 races on the trot.

Not to mention that for a couple of years the Red Bull's dominated everywhere but Low-Downforce circuits. It became clear last year that he had also sorted that out so now RBR has a package for basically every circuit.
 
In 2011 they were also fast on low downforce circuits.
And last year after the summer break Mclaren won the first two races.

Maybe he pushed a little more this year, so the other teams would give up and he could focus more on next year's car.
 
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Auto Motor und Sport quotes Sauber's Tom McCullough saying below 120 kph, pure mechanical grip is as important as aerodynamics. And Newey also is a master of finding an optimal blend of camber, toe-in, roll stiffness, travel and air pressure.

In 2011, Vettel was the fastest car in all three sectors in the Monaco qualies. Webber was 3°, 2° and 3°. In the race, Vettel was 2° in all three sectors and Webber was 1° in 2&3. The RB7 owned the slowest sector on the slowest circuit in F1. In 2010, Webber and Vettel qualified 1&3 (respectively) at Monaco and finished 1&2.

More than the summer break, I think Red Bull's new-found dominance is the result of the return to kevlar-belted tyres (just as Pirelli's Baghdad Bob predicted). RBR no longer are being punished for creating so much downforce.

The only evidence Vettel might have been pushing at Singapore was on the stopwatch. Martin Brundle wrote Vettel cornered as if his car were on rails. He little used the kerbs, stayed away from the walls, cautiously applied the throttle when exiting corners, and looked quite at ease. Everyone else was slamming into the kerbs, flirting with the walls and squirming under acceleration exiting the corners. He further remarked this was due to equal parts Vettel and Newey.
 
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Auto Motor und Sport are reporting that the increased sidewall stiffness of the 2012-spec tyres is what gave Red Bull the leg-up. It apparently allowed them to do more higgery-jiggery with the car's rake, which improved aerodynamics.

The writer editorialises that this set the other teams to whinging about cheating because they needed some excuse to cover their own lack of progress.
 
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Newey will be sitting out Suzuka to spend the weekend in Milton Keynes, focusing on the 2014 car. Speaks volumes about where his greater worries are.
 
It was known ten years or more ago that Newey was interested in designing racing yachts. Maybe F1 could look different with no Newey and Honda engines in 2015.

But, alas, there will still be DRS, crap tyres, kerbs that aren't and white lines which have no meaning.
 
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