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Here are all the F1 cars designed by the legendary Adrian Newey

No other F1 designer has penned more championship winning cars than Adrian Newey.

Jonathan M. Gitlin – May 5, 2024 7:00 am | 69

When you're a legendary F1 designer like Adrian Newey, it's easy to persuade the team to let you have a go in one of your own creations. Credit: Andrew Hone/Getty Images for Red Bull

In Formula 1, the car isn’t quite everything, but ultimately, how well the team’s designers did their job creating a racing car is a more important factor in a team’s success on track than how good their drivers are. It’s not that F1 drivers don’t matter, but even the best driver on the grid will struggle to earn points if they’re not in a competitive car.

One designer has been responsible for creating competitive cars more than any other, penning 12 championship-winning cars in 32 years. His name is Adrian Newey, and this week, we discovered he’s looking for a new job.

As in other sports, F1’s “silly season” is what they call that time period when contracts are up and people are switching to new teams; it’s named as such because it’s what happens when there’s no real news to report but you need a story anyway.

This year, the silly season got underway well before the first of the year, and it’s been sillier than most. First, Andretti Cadillac got snubbed by the sport—because an email went to a spam folder—then seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton announced he was leaving longtime home Mercedes, for Ferrari. Just as everything started to calm down, the Red Bull team started to look a little… implodey as Red Bull team boss Christian Horner was accused of inappropriate behavior by a female employee.

At the time, rumors circulated that Red Bull’s superstar, Max Verstappen, could try to use the Horner scandal as a way to leave the team. That didn’t happen, but something just as consequential did—it precipitated the departure of Newey. The superstar designer will finish the Red Bull RB17 hypercar project before departing the team early in 2025.

“Ever since I was a young boy, I wanted to be a designer of fast cars. My dream was to be an engineer in Formula 1, and I’ve been lucky enough to make that dream a reality,” Newey said in a statement. His autobiography, which tells the story of how he made that happen, is worth a read, but today we’ve put together some galleries of Newey’s various creations—an illustrated history of his career as the world’s most successful race car designer.

The early years

Newey’s first racing cars weren’t F1 machines. He started work at the race car builder March, and after working as a race engineer in IndyCar and then F2 for March customers, he designed the March 82G, aka the Lobster Claw, which raced in IMSA’s GTP category. He then penned the 1985 Indy 500-winning March 85C, then its successor in 1986, before leaving March for a couple of years, then returning to design his first F1 car for the small F1 team Leyton House in 1988. Newey designed Leyton House’s cars for March until 1990 when he moved to Williams as chief designer.

The Williams years

Williams was a much more competitive team then than now, and Newey’s FW14 turned out to be one of the most successful F1 cars, notching up seven wins in 1991 and 10 wins in 1992, earning Nigel Mansell the championship in the process. 1993 saw Alain Prost take the crown with the Newey-designed FW15C, then Damon Hill became champion in 1996 with the FW18, followed by Jacques Villeneuve in 1997 with the FW19.

The McLaren years

However, Newey was already gone by the time Villeneuve raced the FW19 in anger. He departed the Williams team in 1996 to join McLaren for the 1998 season, partly because owners Frank Williams and Patrick Head refused to offer the designer an equity stake in the team. Newey’s first car for McLaren was the MP4/13, like most of his creations, a winner. It gave McLaren the driver and constructor championship in 1998, and its successor, the MP4/14, allowed Mika Hakkinen to take a second championship.

But the 2000s saw the start of Ferrari’s dominant period, with Michael Schumacher driving, Ross Brawn designing, and Jean Todt running the team. McLaren took more wins, but Newey’s relationship with McLaren boss Ron Dennis wasn’t always the best, and there was even an unraced car, the MP4/18. Getting bored with the sport, Newey made noises about designing an America’s Cup yacht, but in 2005 instead announced he was leaving McLaren for the Red Bull Racing team, then still in its infancy.

The Red Bull years

Newey’s first Red Bull, the RB3, showed up in 2007. It had a sister car, the Toro Rosso STR2—at the time, the rules allowed the teams to share the designs since they had the same owner, a practice that has since been banned. Neither was amazing, nor was the RB4 the following year, though the STR3, powered by a Ferrari engine instead of the Renault in the Red Bull, gave a young Sebastian Vettel his first win.

The RB6 was his first championship Red Bull, the first of six, spanning two distinct sets of technical regulations.

Where does Newey go next?

Where Newey will go next is the hottest question in Formula 1. Most people’s money is on Ferrari. This would link him up with Lewis Hamilton, but questions remain as to whether the designer actually wants to uproot his life and move to Italy, despite the resources that Ferrari can spend on him.

Aston Martin is also believed to be bidding for his services, but perhaps the most poetic option would be a return to Williams. Now owned by a private equity firm, Williams doesn’t have the same level of resources as either Ferrari or Aston Martin and is far behind either team in terms of performance right now. But its owners could offer Newey something he’s wanted since his first stint at Williams: an equity stake—rather than just being an employee.

Such a move is probably unlikely, but wouldn’t it be wonderful to see?

Listing image: Andrew Hone/Getty Images for Red Bull

Jonathan M. Gitlin Automotive Editor

Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica's automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC.

69 Comments

Staff Picks

Numfuddle

Especially if he's caught hanging out around with the Andretti team. If Mario is willing to give him the equity stake that he wants that would be a resounding naswer to the "we don't think you can design a competitive car" argument from F1. He wouldn't have to move with their new Silverstone Facility. And with them not being on the grid yet a couple years of unlimited GM wind tunnel time until they do get let in.

Earlier this year Newey gave an interview where he said that if he changes teams he wants to go somewhere where he can make an impact quickly. He said he’s 65 and he doesn’t want to commit to another decade long project.

In the same interview he basically boiled it down to Ferrari, McLaren or retirement.

Aston was out because he doesn’t like Stroll and thinks that Stroll is only interested in him to boost the resale value of the team before he flips it
Mercedes was out because he thinks it will take years to set up the structures and re-focus development in order to fix their broken car
Williams according to him first needs someone who can oversee updates to their whole internal workings, processes and facilities before someone like him can even make an impact

He’s certainly interested to continue in F1 and he’ll maybe change his mind once he had a break and people threatened him with enough money and appealed to his ego but right now he’s not interested in a long term project

That’s why he found especially Ferrari interesting because the fundamentals are already in place.

edit: fixed a few typos and rephrased some awkward sentences

May 6, 2024 at 2:01 pm