What makes Newey so good? 'You need real-world knowledge'

Coulthard knows Newey well. At Williams, the two met when Coulthard was a test driver. Later, Coulthard worked with Newey also at McLaren and Red Bull Racing. According to the 53-year-old former driver, Newey is so good because he thinks like a racing driver, pointing out that Newey himself occasionally gets into a racing car.

"Adrian does not drive lap times that will scare Max Verstappen, but he did participate in the Historic Grand Prix in Monaco again earlier this year. As a result, he knows exactly what a driver is talking about when they talk about understeer when getting on the throttle or the transition from understeer to oversteer when coming out of a corner. Adrian has been a race engineer himself and therefore he actually has the whole package," Coulthard told Motorsport.com.

Newey (almost) unmatchable

Coulthard  sees that today it is mostly people with an engineering background who design the cars, but they have no racing background. Newey does have that. "I think that gives him a competitive advantage over others, who may be academically much more highly regarded," he said. "Adrian may not have the academic C.V. that scares many engineers, but that's another example of theory versus practice. You need knowledge from practice to ultimately achieve good performance."

This article was written in collaboration with Kada Sarkozi