With 15 wins in 16 races in this year’s Formula 1 championship so far, the 2023 Red Bull RB19 holds exactly the same record as the 1988 McLaren MP4/4-Honda and has undoubtedly already secured a place in the pantheon of legendary cars among sports mechanics.

Adrian Newey has far surpassed legendary McLaren MP4/4 designer Gordon Murray in sporting achievements, and what the former told the official Formula 1 podcast “Beyond the Grid” sheds light on how he created the RB19 will be remembered forever.

The British aerodynamicist and managing director of mechanical engineering at Red Bull Racing said that he followed a different design philosophy from Mercedes and Ferrari with the RB19 from the start, implementing the new technical regulations that came into force from 20202.

The 2022 regulations brought ground effect back to Formula 1, that is, the generation of most of the lift by the air ducts that run under the floor and cause the Venturi effect. “It was the largest single regulatory change we have had since the ban on Venturi cars in late 1982.” Newey explained.

And he continued, talking about the original conception of the RB18: “You had to deal with the rulebook and try to figure out what architecture to follow: where should the front wheels be placed, where should the rear wheels be placed in relation to the given points of the chassis, the engine and the gearbox.”

They had to decide on the entire architecture. I focused on the architecture and then the front and rear suspension because those were the critical components that you have to try as hard as possible to get right.

Of course, if you make a mistake with the bodywork, you can try to improve it to some extent throughout the year. But get the structural architecture wrong and you’ll be stuck with it for at least a season. added the Brit.

Commenting on the major differences in design philosophy between the Red Bull RB18 and last year’s Mercedes W13, Newey added: “Obviously we went in an aerodynamic direction with our car last year, with the side vents and the design, with the overall concept of the car, which was almost the complete opposite of what Mercedes did.”

Last year Mercedes had a first glimpse of its competitiveness with its victory in Brazil. And then in such cases you are faced with the question of whether you should investigate Mercedes in case you have missed something, or whether you should stick with what you are already doing. And our intuition was to stick with it, so we did.”

In fact, the Brit revealed that the RB18 was developed in a much shorter time than the Mercedes and – especially – the 2022 Ferrari: As he said, the RB18 “Put together in less time than most, if not all, of our competitors. In 2021 we found ourselves in a major championship battle with Mercedes and, probably unfairly because it was the first time we had been in such a position in years, we decided to put a lot of our effort into development this year dedicate to the car.

Ferrari took the opposite approach. Since he wasn’t fighting for the title in 1921, he stopped developing the ’21 car too early and devoted himself to developing the ’22 car. Mercedes was somewhere in between.

We have evolved more than either of these two groups. And that theoretically put us at a disadvantage. But I think what we managed to do was get the architecture right.

So if the [RB]Ferrari, who finished 18th in Bahrain last year, were certainly just as quick, if not quicker, at the start of the season. We managed to get the basic building blocks of the car right and that gave us a good development platform for the rest of the year.”

Finally, Newey revealed how he dug very deep into the past to find solutions earlier and more efficiently than any other team to the problem of porpoise formation that was so intense at the start of the new regulatory framework and in 2022 – especially for Mercedes.

“We also had some jumps, but not as bad as other teams,” explained the 64-year-old designer. “But they existed and we had to deal with them. And I think we had a pretty good understanding of what we needed to do about it.”

With the first upgrade we prepared for the Bahrain race, jumps were now less of an issue than for the other teams. This meant we didn’t have to put as much energy into developing the car as Ferrari and Mercedes did.

I think the key point – particularly with these Venturi cars that came out last year, although that was true for last year too – is not just the aerodynamics, but the way it works with the chassis. And that’s a point where I maybe had a little bit of an advantage because I had similar experiences when I was at (Team) Fittipaldi and then working at (American) IndyCars.

I spent three seasons in IndyCars, where we also had Venturi cars. This allowed me to understand the interaction well [αεροδυναμικής και σασί]. I still remember the first time we went to the track with Fittipaldi Harvey Postwhite, the young technical director there, because the cars had such a tight suspension that he came up with the idea of ​​saving some weight by he threw out the front shock absorbers and springs and replaced them with rubber plates.

It was something he had experienced during his time in Hesketh. I remember Keke Rosberg coming down the old pitlane at Silverstone with his front wheels in the air – the jumps were so violent. I think that was an early lesson that what we were experiencing wasn’t just about aerodynamics, but about connecting aerodynamics to suspension.” concluded Adrian Newey.

Photo credit: Red Bull Content Pool