F1 News
'With Newey, it doesn't matter what it looks like'
- Sam Godber
One of the big brains behind the great success of Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen this year, as well as more than a decade ago, is top designer Adrian Newey. Red Bull's head of design, Craig Skinner, works closely with Newey and is full of praise.
How Skinner describes his colleague Newey makes it clear how crucial the Briton is in the Formula One team. The record run of 13 consecutive victories the team now stands on is due to Newey's philosophy, according to Skinner. In that philosophy, there is no room for compromise.
'It doesn't matter if car is ugly'
On the Talking Bull podcast, Skinner says of the top designer: "With him [Newey] it’s always about car performance, nothing else matters. And I think when I joined in 2006, and then he arrived, obviously, (it was) my first Formula One car that I’d worked on. He just completely changed the mindset about how you go about designing a Formula One car."
"There was no compromise", Skinner continued. The Red Bull designer reiterates his point that Newey is all about car performance. Skinner calls it a single-minded view, but is impressed by it. "Looks don’t matter. If it looks horrible but it makes the car faster, we’ll put it on the car."