Newey is not worried about copycat behaviour: 'It's a serious compliment'
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- Toby McLuskie
The success of the RB19 has led other Formula 1 teams to follow Red Bull Racing's design philosophy. At Barcelona, for instance, Ferrari appeared with new sidepods reminiscent of Red Bull's and Mercedes has now also switched to a design with sidepods. Adrian Newey takes his rivals' copying behaviour sportingly and sees it as a compliment.
Aston Martin was the first F1 team to take obvious inspiration from the Austrian racing stable's design, but it is now seen on several cars. Still, Newey is not worried about the copycat behaviour of rival teams.
Newey sees copycat behaviour in F1 as a compliment
"It's a serious compliment when people copy. It's part of F1 of course. We all look at each other. In truth, we have copied things from other people as well," the master designer admitted in conversation with Sky Sports.
He continues: "Some of that copying is visual, some of it is occasionally from people moving around - we have seen that this year. It's part of F1, it's an intense competition. You can't have pride. You have got to always evaluate what others are doing. You might end up directly copying it or it might give you ideas of 'why have they done that' and does that make you do something differently."
Newey explains the way in which he himself sometimes gets inspiration from other teams. "More often than not it's, 'this looks interesting. Let's have a look at what our car does in this area in detail and does what they have done spark any ideas of how we might develop our own car.' Not necessarily by simply copying but why have they done that and does that bring any ideas," Newey said.