The RACER journal hitting mailboxes and inboxes proper about now’s our annual Nice Vehicles Concern, but it surely might properly have been referred to as The Adrian Newey Concern, such is the Formulation 1 design genius’s presence in it.
We check out a few of his groundbreaking vehicles from three a long time of F1, however we’re additionally wanting ahead to the subsequent chapter of Newey’s still-cutting edge journey.
With Formulation 1’s 2014 turbo-hybrid revamp and its 2022 floor results redux as Exhibit A and B, it’s honest to say that when new guidelines come into play, you solely get one likelihood to crack the code otherwise you’ll be a very long time enjoying catchup.
Which is the place Newey is available in…
In 2014, Mercedes’ dominant W05 Hybrid was the whole package deal, a automobile and energy unit in concord. However Newey’s Pink Bull RB10 was arguably the higher chassis/aero combo — one solely let down by Renault’s lackluster PU.
In 2022, with Honda energy supplanting the earlier weak hyperlink, Newey’s RB18 was the category of the sector. It remained so by means of two extra iterations and into 2024’s RB20, till McLaren’s in-season revamp of its MCL38 lastly unlocked Pink Bull-matching — and now Pink Bull-beating — efficiency.
Coming subsequent, there’s one other main F1 guidelines reset in 2026 — prime Newey territory. Which explains why Aston Martin has made F1’s enduring design trendsetter a suggestion he couldn’t — and didn’t — refuse.
The phrases of Newey’s Pink Bull contract put him out of play till subsequent spring — too late to have a major bearing on Aston’s 2025 automobile. However for 2026, with the enjoying discipline leveled and one other alternative for its new Chief Technical Officer to seek out the correct solutions on the first time of asking, anticipate Aston Martin to shine.
The “Newey Impact” has already produced title-winning F1 vehicles at Williams, McLaren and latterly Pink Bull — albeit with an ever larger and extra complicated matrix of technical expertise round him — however for this problem of RACER we’re going all the way in which again to his first F1 design, 1988’s March 881. With its naturally aspirated engine an apparent second greatest to the still-dominant turbos, it didn’t win a championship, or perhaps a grand prix, but it surely did redefine F1 aero considering in ways in which nonetheless resonate right this moment.
And 35 years on, we’re nonetheless questioning the place Newey can take F1 subsequent. That’s endurance.
Persevering with the Nice Vehicles theme — and shifting it exterior of Adrian Newey territory — we recall the early years of certainly one of rallying’s most evocative vehicles, the Subaru Impreza (with Colin McRae on the wheel, energy down and sideways, in fact), and we inform the fascinating story of 1994’s Dauer 962LM, the race-to-road-to-race automobile that supplied Porsche with a last-minute, left-field — and successful — answer to the query, what are we doing for the 24 Hours of Le Mans this yr?
Additionally on this problem, we sit down with 2024 NTT IndyCar Sequence champ Alex Palou as he continues to forge a Corridor of Fame profession in double-quick time, learn the way the storied Williams workforce is placing the items in place for a return to F1’s sharp finish, and take a look at Tyler Reddick’s upward-trending NASCAR Cup Sequence arc. On two wheels, we meet a second-gen Deegan — as in, Haiden — as he unleashes a breakout yr in motocross.
We loved placing this one collectively, and we hope you take pleasure in it, too. Oh, and thanks for the storylines, Adrian Newey…
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