Over the last couple of years, legendary Formula One car designer Adrian Newey has often bemoaned restrictive regulations. For someone who was innovative in his designs with his cars winning more than 150 races and 10 world titles, the new rules shackled him.
With a view to keep the competition close, regulators reduced the scope for engineers to seek out-of-the-box solutions or a silver bullet. As a result, Newey has slowly taken a backseat from his role as Chief Technical Officer at Red Bull Racing F1 team (where his designs won the team four straight world titles from 2010-13). He has since pursued other interests like designing an Aston Martin road car; even briefly being involved with the America’s Cup sailing event for Ben Ainslie.
While F1 fans might echo his views on the direction of the sport, they can also be thankful that it has allowed (or forced) Newey, who still uses a drawing board to do his designs than use CAD (computer-aided design), to trade his pencil for a pen to jot down his memoir.
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Newey writes about his work over three decades in motorsport. He had a short stint in F1 with Fittipaldi Automotive, and designed multiple IndyCar winning machines before becoming a celebrated F1 designer for Williams, McLaren and Red Bull.
He helps the reader understand the process behind the design of an F1 car — from the drawing board to unexpected headaches once the car hits the track and the solutions he devised. For geeks, Newey’s hand-drawn sketches are an added treat.
While he is widely acknowledged as the best designer the sport has seen, Newey will also be known as the man who designed the car in which the great Ayrton Senna died during the San Marino GP in 1994.
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In what is the book’s best chapter, Newey explains in great detail the flaws of that Williams car in which Senna was killed during that disastrous weekend in Imola. As he narrates the final moments of Senna and the reasons for the crash, the reader can feel the pain of that fateful event.
Like all memoirs, the book has juicy tidbits on what he thinks of some of the most influential men F1 has seen like his previous bosses, Patrick Head of Williams and former McLaren boss Ron Dennis. Between the car and the driver, success in F1 is heavily weighed in favour of the car. But the drivers make the sport what it is. Though Newey writes about the drivers he has worked with, a deeper insight would have been welcome.
How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Formula 1 Designer ; Adrian Newey, HarperCollins, ₹999.