Top five, bottom five: Adrian Newey F1 cars

Adrian Newey is F1’s most successful designer – but not everything he’s touched turned to gold. Here are his five greatest and worst cars.

Top five Adrian Newey F1 cars

5. Red Bull RB19

Year: 2023
Championship position: 1st
Wins: 21

Statistically speaking, this is not merely the most successful car Adrian Newey designed, but the most dominant machine in Formula 1 history.

However greatness is not merely a matter of accumulated success, but a question of how it drove forward development in racing car design. Arguably, F1 has never been less fertile ground for radical thinking than it is today.

That takes nothing away from how impressive the RB19 was as a solution to a restrictive set of F1 rules which were intended to reduce the possibility one team might devise a radically superior car. Red Bull laughed in the face of that throughout 2023.

It’s true, too, the design work on this car and its predecessor, the RB18, began during 2021, when Red Bull were later found to have exceeded the F1 budget cap.

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4. Leyton House March 881

Year: 1988
Championship position: 6th
Wins: 0

In 1988 McLaren’s mighty MP4/4 set standards of dominance which seemed unapproachable until the RB19 came along. The drivers’ championship was contested exclusively by its pilots, Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost. But during the denouement at Suzuka, another car poked its way into the lead for a single lap: The March 881, driven by Ivan Capelli.

It wasn’t the first F1 car Newey had worked on but it was the first he was substantially responsible for. He said it was “probably the most important of my career” in terms of providing a template for his future F1 designs.

Newey sketched designs for the car as he flew back and forth between Europe and the USA as he worked on March’s CART IndyCar programme. He raised and narrowed the nose to improve airflow around the front wing: One of his many novel ideas which soon became de rigueur. He tightened the cockpit dimensions to an extreme degree, so much so Capelli couldn’t change gear, resulting in Newey fashioning an extension to the cockpit overnight at Imola before testing began.

Mid-season set-up tweaks allowed the car to deliver on Newey’s goal of overcoming their power deficit to their turbocharged rivals. Capelli took third at Spa and second at Estoril – then retired shortly after his spell in the lead at Suzuka. Nonetheless the car announced Newey to the paddock, and many cars of 1989 took inspiration from the 881.

3. Red Bull RB7

Year: 2011
Championship position: 1st
Wins: 12

One of Newey’s great strengths has always been his ability to suss the key implications of a major change in Formula 1 regulations better than anyone else. That might have been obvious in 2009, when Red Bull scored their first F1 wins and vaulted from seventh to second in the championship. But unusually he had missed a trick: the ‘double diffuser’ exploited by that year’s champions Brawn.

However that season’s RB5 was another example of Newey establishing a template which proved a sound basis for development over the following years. Never more so than in 2011, by which time the FIA had banned the ‘double diffuser’ concept, so Red Bull responded by reintroducing a concept first seen in F1 almost three decades earlier: blowing exhaust gases into the diffuser to increase its performance.

Renault produced new engine management software which fed a consistent flow of air into the diffuser, and the resulting car was so quick Red Bull were only beaten to pole position once all season. Vettel won his second world championship at a canter, and he and the team took four titles in a row over the following seasons as Red Bull dominated the end of the ‘V8 era’.

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2. McLaren MP4/13

Year: 1998
Championship position: 1st
Wins: 9

Another example of Newey mastering an off-season change in rules, plus one in the eye for triskaidekaphobes, the MP4/13 remains the last McLaren to win the constructors’ championship.

The FIA sought to dramatically increase lap times when it introduced rules reducing car widths from two metres to 1.8, and imposing the use of grooved tyres instead of slicks. McLaren were already well on with their plans for the new rules when Newey, who had left Williams at the end of 1996, arrived in August 1997 with ideas of his own. By combining the two, allied to Mercedes’ increasingly powerful V10 engine and Bridgestone’s tyres, McLaren produced a formidable machine.

That much became clear when Mika Hakkinen lapped one-and-a-half seconds quicker than the opposition during testing. Soon after the championship began the FIA banned one McLaren invention – a third pedal which allowed the drivers to shift braking force between the rear wheels to aid cornering – but it didn’t stop them dominating the opening races, putting them on course for the championship.

1. Williams FW14B

Year: 1992
Championship position: 1st
Wins: 10

Famously, the car so dominant its successor was deemed surplus to requirements. Williams could have introduced the FW15 during 1992, but why bother when you’re taking pole position for your home race by 2.7 seconds over the next car, as Nigel Mansell did at Silverstone?

In its ‘vanilla’ 1991 form, the FW14 was a race winner and championship contender, which demanded the best from Senna and McLaren to beat it. But when the introduction of active suspension allowed the car to operate in constantly ideal aerodynamic conditions, Newey’s creation performed like nothing else around it.

The car had a dauntingly high limit in fast corners, and Mansell was more prepared to take it there than team mate Riccardo Patrese. He won the championship in just 10 of 16 races.

The team built on its success with the FW15C, which piled more electronic wizardry on top of it, and Mansell’s replacement Prost cruised to his fourth title. Not for the last time, the FIA had seen enough, and a raft of technologies Newey and his team had mastered were banned for the following season.

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Bottom five Adrian Newey F1 cars

5. McLaren MP4/17A

Year: 2002
Championship position: 3rd
Wins: 1

A decade on from Williams’ dominant title win, another F1 car was sweeping all before it – but it hadn’t been designed by Newey. While Michael Schumacher finished every race of the 2002 season on the podium, wrapping up the title even earlier than Mansell did, McLaren won just one race.

Some of the MP4/17A’s problems could be blamed on its troubled gestation. McLaren had split from Bridgestone, who were increasingly favouring Ferrari, but weren’t able to test with new supplier Michelin until work on the new car was at an advanced stage. The team had the added complication of building a new factory and wind tunnel.

The result was, by Newey’s admission, a “clumsy” design. He set about revising its rear suspension and gearbox but the modifications were completed late in the season and some held over to the following season. The car only won once all year, in Monaco.

McLaren expected a significant improvement for the following year. But in seeking to correct course, Newey made another misstep.

4. Red Bull RB11

Year: 2015
Championship position: 3rd
Wins: 0

The weak link in Red Bull’s 2015 machine – and arguably every one of the team’s cars between 2014 and 2018 – was unquestionably its Renault engine. The manufacturer which powered them to four consecutive title doubles at the end of the V8 era failed to master the V6 hybrid turbo regulations. Nonetheless, Newey’s RB10 was the only thing which prevented Mercedes from winning every race in 2014, taking three victories in Daniel Ricciardo’s hands.

But it soon became clear Renault did not share Red Bull and Newey’s resolve to turn their form around. Newey entertained offers from Red Bull’s rivals Mercedes and, for the third time in his career, Ferrari. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, undoubtedly spooked by concerns his star designer might leave, repeatedly laid into Renault in public.

Newey was given other projects to entertain himself with, including a hypercar for Aston Martin, which became the team’s title sponsor. But while in the past he had found ways to make up for a shortfall in performance from the engine, the RB11 failed to score a single victory, and remains the only win-less Red Bull of the last 15 years.

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3. Williams FW16

Year: 1994
Championship position: 1st
Wins: 7

Although it ultimately won the world championships and seven races (five of which in its ‘B’ specification) the FW16 remains one of Newey’s least favourite cars for obvious reasons. It is the only one of his designs a driver has ever lost their life in, and it was one of the sport’s most famous and beloved drivers of all: Three-times world champion Ayrton Senna.

Following the FIA’s decision to ban most driver aids at the end of 1994, no team had more to do in order to adjust to the new regulations than Williams, who had mastered the active suspension era more successfully than anyone. But when their new car hit the track Senna and team mate Damon Hill soon reported its handling was unstable at high speeds.

Newey believed he identified the source of the problem in a test after the second round of the season and began work on revised sidepods for introduction later in the year. But at the third race, Imola, Senna crashed and was killed.

Later, the improvements to the car’s handling succeeded. The combined efforts of Hill plus team mates Mansell and David Coulthard delivered another constructors’ title for Williams, but the FW16 was a car no one remembered with any fondness.

2. Leyton House March 891

Year: 1989
Championship position: 12th*
Wins: 0

When Leyton House rocked up at the first race of 1989 with their old car and Mauricio Gugelmin scored a podium finish at home, the team had high hopes that once Newey’s second creation hit the track they would be catapulted even further forwards. But nothing could have been further from reality: They didn’t score again all season.

It took over a year for Newey to discover the root cause was a deformation in the shape of their wind tunnel’s floor, which let them to design an excessively aggressive diffuser and, consequently, make decisions regarding the gearbox shape which led to reliability problems.

The revised diffuser was eventually introduced in mid-1990 at the French Grand Prix. By that time Newey had agreed to join Williams, which meant he wasn’t at the track to see Capelli lead more than half the race, then finish second after Prost passed him with three laps to go.

*All points scored with 881 chassis

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1. McLaren MP4/18

Year: 2003
Championship position: N/A
Wins: N/A

If the FW14B was the car so good its replacement was unnecessary, the MP4/18 could be called the car so flawed it couldn’t be raced.

But this is slightly unfair: Part of the reason McLaren never raced its intended car for the 2003 season was that the evolution of its predecessor, MP4/17D, proved so effective in the opening rounds. McLaren won the first two races and Kimi Raikkonen was still leading the drivers’ championship after round seven in Monaco.

The MP4/18 made its first appearance two weeks earlier in a test at Paul Ricard in France. The visibly more aggressive design made its predecessor and most of its rivals appear dumpy by comparison.

But too many concessions had been made to achieve its shrink-wrapped bodywork, and the car seldom ran for more than a handful of laps before being greeted by McLaren mechanics armed with fire extinguishers. Its carbon composite gearbox gave more headaches and Newey identified an aerodynamic stall which required changes to the shape of the chassis. On top of that, Raikkonen and test driver Alexander Wurz both suffered heavy crashes in it.

At least the team’s season was going well, which afforded them the luxury of being able to decide whether to persist with the MP4/18 for 2004 or – Newey’s preference – revise the chassis. To Newey’s fury, in a meeting led by managing director Martin Whitmarsh, the team decided against following his plans for a redesign and opted to continue with the existing car. “I totally lost it, called Martin all the names under the sun and walked out,” he admitted in his autobiography. “Not necessarily my proudest moment.”

Newey had not long since turned down an offer from his former driver Bobby Rahal to join Jaguar, which later became Red Bull. The next time they came knocking he had a different answer.

And not forgetting…

Newey has had too many successful cars to cover them all here. His FW18 and FW19 captured both titles in the 1996 and 1997 seasons respectively, the latter after he’d left Williams. Hakkinen took a second drivers’ title in the MP4/13’s successor in 1999.

The MP4/18 and 19 eventually evolved into the MP4/20, which won the most races of any car in 2005, and with better reliability from its Mercedes engine might also have won a title. More recently, the Red Bull RB16B of 2021 ended Mercedes’ eight-year monopoly of the championships, albeit in controversial circumstances. Since then his cars have been the benchmark of the modern ‘ground’ effect era, sweeping the titles and winning 38 out of 44 grands prix over 2022 and 2023.

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