In racing, you can be right on the edge—what works can be amazing, but if you push too far, it can go wrong fast. The “fine line” is that balance between success and failure.
In a race car, the pedals have to be positioned so the driver can use them quickly and accurately. If the cockpit is too cramped, it can make driving harder.
If the rear wheels come off, something critical failed in how the wheel is attached or driven. That’s a worst-case scenario because the car can’t stay on the track.
KERS is a system that grabs energy from braking and saves it to use later for a performance boost. The challenge is fitting it into the car without causing other problems like heat or space issues.
This is the business side of running a team—money, sponsorships, and contracts. The point is that if you do too much of that, you have less time to focus on making the car better.
Vibration is when the car shakes or hums more than normal. In racing, it can be a warning sign that something is misaligned or not working right, and it can get worse if ignored.
Formula One is the highest level of car racing with very fast, purpose-built race cars. Teams constantly tweak the cars and strategies, and tiny errors can have huge consequences.
Ron Dennis was a major leader in Formula One, especially connected with the McLaren team. He helped steer the team’s direction during many successful years.
A wind tunnel is like a giant fan test. Engineers put a car model in the airflow to see how slippery it is and how much grip it can generate from the air.
Honda is another major Formula One engine partner. The idea here is that Honda reacts to how teams talk about performance—public criticism can affect the relationship, even if results still come.
Renault is one of the big names in Formula One. If a team changes from Renault to another engine partner, it can seriously affect how fast and reliable the car is.
They’re talking about how saying negative things in public can hurt working relationships. In F1, that can slow down how teams and suppliers respond to problems.
“Scavenging wasted energy” is the efficiency strategy behind hybrid systems: capture energy that would otherwise be lost (often during braking) and reuse it later. In F1, that can translate into both performance gains and reduced fuel consumption.
“Vision of perfection” describes a design philosophy where the engineer/designer aims for an ideal end state rather than incremental compromise. In high-level motorsport engineering, that mindset can produce breakthroughs—but it can also create friction if the team can’t align on priorities, timelines, or acceptable trade-offs.
It means someone helps translate between the technical team and the driver. The goal is to make sure the driver understands what to change and why, based on what they’re experiencing.
Feel and intuition are the driver’s instincts—how they sense what the car is doing and react quickly. The point is that racing success isn’t only about calculations; it’s also about how the car feels to the driver.
The paddock is the busy area at a race where teams set up the cars and do their work. It’s also where drivers and team members deal with media and logistics.
A wheelie is when you accelerate and the bike’s front wheel lifts up. It’s fun when controlled, but if it gets out of balance it can cause a crash.
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You're listening to The Undercuts with Damon Hill and Mark Hughes.
Adrian Newey, he's a man in the news at the moment, isn't he, with these difficulties
with the Aston Martin. And Adrian's always, because he pushes so hard, he often gets himself
in a situation where it's sort of on that fine line, doesn't he? It works more often than it
doesn't work, but it's sometimes dumps him in the poo bit like this. Who knows, it probably will
come good eventually, but at the moment it's like that, isn't it? Was that your
feeling when you were working with Adrian? Well, I think that when I was with Adrian,
he'd already been at Williams for a season or two, maybe one season. But he was one of the reasons
I went there. I mean, I knew that this was going to be really interesting because his
March Formula One car clearly had ruffled some feathers and really showed the direction of
travel because up until then the cars, you look at them, they're like boxes. And suddenly this
guy turns up and goes, we can shape carbon fiber chassis. Instead of it just being the box and
then the aerodynamics being the wings, we can use the airflow around this carbon fiber and change
the way the air flows through the radiators and various things. And clearly that was revolutionary.
But the problem was it was out there on the limits of knowledge, but I think this defines
Adrian. I think he gets a kick out of it. If you said to Adrian, we'd be safe if we stayed within
that circle. Would he go? Perhaps when he came outside the circle. Not only on the limit,
in that sense, but on the limit, dimensionally as well because famously, Capelli and Guglerman
could barely, they had to cross their feet in order to work in new uniforms. No, I wouldn't
look at it. I mean, it would drive it. Capelli's slightly more slender, but Guglerman was a big
big-ish guy. And you could sort of see him sort of squashed in this corner.
You had to get your one foot partly overlapping the other to just operate the pedals. So that's
I don't think Adrian has gone as extreme as that in dimensions, but it illustrates a way of thinking,
doesn't it? Yeah. I mean, if you could design drivers, then he'd be away. But I remember once
him talking about Hülkenberg, and so what do you think, Hülkenberg, he's pretty good, he said,
trouble is he's too big from the waist up. In other words, he was taking into account the
effect on the chassis of the guy's physique as being sufficiently negative to offset whatever
benefit he brought as a driver. So sorry, Nico, but nothing you could do about that,
chop your arm off, I suppose. But it really was that important to me. Every little
bit is calculated. Any kind of extra weight above the centreline of the car is no good.
But when he started work with Williams, I got the sense that Patrick was aware of this tendency
to go beyond. So Patrick would represent the Ismbard Kingdom Brunel approach to building a racing
car. It would have to last, you know, and not a Colin Chapman, let's say. But of course, Colin
Chapman was the inspiration for Adrian Newey. Adrian looked at Colin and went, this is the guy.
That's my guy. And a little aside here, because when he came out to Nelly One, there was a little
nice little story from a journalist, an Italian journalist who said that they had supper and
was talking about when Jim Clark won a race. He gave the thumbs up signal. And so Kimmy was talking
to this tendency, oh, well, when I win, I'll do that. And he did it in China. So he crossed the
line, there's a picture of him doing the thumbs up. And then he saw the journalist afterwards and
said, I remembered, I remembered, you know, so he did the same thumbs up that Jim Clark did in 1967
at the US Grand Prix. But if you look at the picture of the car crossing the line, the rear
wheels falling off. So the point is this, that it was a lotus. And Colin always said,
the perfect car will fall apart when it crosses the line.
Yeah. Well, your dad famously won, when he clinched the championship in 68,
the gearbox was separating from the engine by the end.
Yeah. So a little bit nerve wracking if you're a driver, clearly. But the attitude is that there's,
there are, if you want to win, you have to go beyond where other people are prepared to go.
And when Adrian started to, I mean, with Adrian's cars, if it was a pure Adrian car,
nearly always it's the installation of the radiators and whatever other
ancillaries they were, including the power unit, the engine in those days as well,
you know, were that he gave them massive headaches because he said,
I don't want it. I need that space for the air.
The engines are really inconvenient for Adrian, isn't it?
Yeah. I mean, when he first brought in Kers, he basically just decided, well,
it's not contributing much. We'll just carry the dead weight around. But I'll put it somewhere
where I want it, which is completely useless. I think it overheated a lot, didn't it?
If I have to carry it, I'm going to put it somewhere where I want it to go.
And it won't actually do anything.
They think that part of the current Honda power unit vibration problem
may be to do with the layout that Adrian asked them if it was possible to do when he arrived,
because he was obviously quite late arriving last year. And he wanted the power unit shortened.
And one way of doing that was to bring the MG UK, to double stack the battery and the electronics,
and to bring the MG UK ahead of the engine rather than behind,
which creates all this lovely space to create downforce. But it might,
Honda haven't sort of put the finger on exactly what the problem is yet,
but it might be related to that.
So, in other words, they, you told, we did what you said.
Yeah.
Now it doesn't work. And we've got egg on our face.
And now you've got Adrian saying that, you know, the Honda.
But then what he'll do, this is what I think he'll do.
Okay, well, we've got the fundamental goal achieved.
Now we just need to make it work.
And that seems to be the trend with Adrian.
Now we've presented a problem to them, the installation's good,
but now we have to find out how to make it work.
And he'll keep pushing in that direction.
And then something will come of it and either it will never work,
which is unlikely because they nearly always do.
But it will take some time.
The thing with Adrian that he really rails against,
and I think it's one of the reasons he left Williams quite aside from
the influence on driver choice and your departure from there,
which was part of it as well.
But it was the imposition of that control that you referred to with Patrick
and with Frank as well.
And he railed against it at McLaren,
where they felt he needed raining in sometimes when he'd gone too extreme.
And they even had a system of a network of spies
who were reporting back to management.
But you know, they said, what's he doing now?
What's he doing?
And they were reporting to show that they,
and he railed against that ultimately while he left.
And Christian Horner was able to keep him for so long
by indulging him and saying, he had structure at however you want.
You know, not really getting it.
But he also had Adrian's design office right in the middle of,
he was like in a glass box where everyone could keep an eye on him.
What's he doing now?
He was like a caged animal in some ways.
But he's like, even then, it came a time, I guess,
where Christians thinking, what's the future?
Adrian's sort of pushing 60.
And so he's bringing somebody else in,
who naturally they wanted to be involved as well.
And Adrian ultimately railed against that.
And so he's now at the logical place where that would take you to,
where that approach would take you to, where he's in charge of everything.
Although, of course, he doesn't want to be in charge of absolutely everything.
He doesn't want to be in charge of the administration and the commercial aspects,
all those things which will take away his focus from what he sees as his mission,
his technical mission.
So that position of team principal really was just as a result of Andy Cowell holding up his hands
and saying, I'm out because he couldn't work with Adrian's way of working.
And so we're now hearing that, as we record this podcast,
that there's going to be a recruitment of another team principal.
I would expect that to be someone who's senior, but not too senior,
and who, therefore, doesn't sort of impinge upon Adrian in the way that he railed against,
like, when Patrick and Ron and people like that were imposing their power over him.
I don't think it'll be like that.
Adrian will still be in charge of everything he wants to be in charge of.
If you're in charge of everything, it means, if you're team principal, you're...
I mean, when we went to Melbourne and it started to come out,
there was a little bit of mixed messages coming out about how many,
what state of play was with the Honda and the power unit and the batteries,
and this vibration.
Well, I think the vibration has been proven to be correct,
but at one point I thought maybe this is a story that they concocted
to cover for the fact that they weren't probably able to compete.
Well, you mean the drivers...
Yeah, the nerve-damaged story, I thought.
And then Adrian comes out and goes,
oh, no, we've only got two batteries and they don't work anymore.
And I suddenly thought, oh, God, is that...
Were you supposed to say that?
But it actually turns out to be all true.
It's all true.
It's all of the above.
It's doubly bad.
But that's his job now as well as fixing all the problems and designing the car
and making the teamwork and deploying the people in the right way.
But then he has got incredible experience of all this.
He's lived his life in a factory designing cars, racing cars.
And he's incredibly competitive, isn't he?
He's, I think it was Frank who said he's the most competitive human being
I've ever encountered, which is coming from Frank is quite something.
You talk to him and he's a really mild-mannered guy
and it just seems so incongruous that he is that incredibly intensely competitive.
What was your relationship like with him?
And did you see that sort of conflict?
Well, first of all, I liked him as a person.
And I think that he was also someone who was a good...
He dealt with stress by laughing about the situations.
It could be an awful situation, but he'd see at some point there's a funny side to it.
Or at least there's nothing you can do.
So his fatalism, I think, got him out of a lot of situations.
I mean, clearly, he dealt with some very, very serious matters,
especially around Imola and Airt and Senna and the court case and various things like that,
which were very, very ugly times.
So quite aware that you're dealing with serious stuff.
But he's not satisfied with that will do.
And I think that is the defining, for me, the people in Formula One.
I'm going back to when I knocked about with my dad at race tracks
and I met these people, the Bernie Ecclestons and the Colin Chapmans
and the various people at Nicky Loud and so forth, Ron Dennis's.
That will do, won't do.
It just won't do.
And then that is what Formula One is.
Bernie was asked once, what is F1?
And he just said it in his own pithy way.
He just said, it's the best.
What is that?
It means there's nothing better than what we do.
And when it could be the travel, it could be the hotels,
it could be the time it takes you to get to the airport.
We do it better than everyone else.
That's what it's about.
More is never enough.
No, because you can't get to perfection.
No, but there's always more.
Yeah, and it's never enough.
But Adrian is like the ultimate iteration of that, I think.
And I think we've got to acknowledge that he's certainly
statistically the greatest technical boss F1 has ever seen.
In terms of longevity of his career, if you look at Chapman,
he had a couple of decades, John Jombonard a couple of decades.
You know, these guys, he's been around forever.
I think the comparison to an artist is probably more apt for him than a designer.
So someone like Picasso or someone like Leonardo da Vinci,
they can't stop because they're so full of creativity.
There's another something that's occurred to them.
And so for him to hang up his hat,
he's had so much success and kind of go, well, I've done enough.
I think he can't resist trying to go further.
And again, I think that's incredible.
I mean, the problem that people like him have is there isn't a lot of life.
They'll keep going and they won't.
I've got more to do.
But Einstein, when his death bed was still trying to do the grand unification fear.
Yeah, yeah.
David Bowie did that famous video, he knew he was dying.
And in the video, the song of Black Star, I think it is,
he's desperately trying to write something down and the paper's going over the edge.
And he's like going around because it's coming to an end.
And he desperately wants to get more stuff out.
And it's like that.
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I think he reminds me, he's like the wandering shaman.
He's just like someone that turns up and does his magic.
But is not satisfied.
And he goes somewhere else and it's not quite right there.
And he goes somewhere else and he's never, never satisfied.
And he's now in this place where in theory, okay, well, they're oyster.
It's all yours.
So yeah.
Yeah, that meant as much.
But he can see what needs to be done.
So if you want to, if it's a troubleshooter,
then you've got the best troubleshooter.
But you know, good luck because you're gonna,
you'll never probably come up to a satisfactory level
because it will, but that point is at least he'll be able to say,
I mean, I remember him talking, we might have mentioned this before already,
but the simulator and the, was it the wind tunnel?
Yeah, yeah, it's gonna take forever.
You know, it's gonna, that's got a bit of work to do.
So yeah, he's able to say, and I think that Honda are going to find out.
I mean, one of the stories that came out was that,
unbeknownst to them, Honda had kind of redeployed all their formal on people
because they were going to do it.
So there aren't any people there.
So they've got to somehow either bring them back or
in get new people and start again with Honda,
which is something which was either not known by them,
which is a bit of a shock.
Or it was, you know, it was something they understood,
but they will now present Honda with this huge challenge.
Yeah.
I think you've probably got to get corporate Honda's attention
to deploy everything towards this potential embarrassment.
You know, they've been here before, turned it around before,
but I think to get, to bring those people back,
or to get equivalent stature of engineers back that can do a quick turnaround,
it's going to require corporate Honda to buy into it.
I think once they'd pulled out and then sort of half went back in,
I think they'd sort of forgotten about Formula One and just,
yeah, it'll take over.
That's fine.
I mean, how many times have Honda come in and gone out again?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, they keep turning on, turning off, turning off, turning off.
And of course, they said, we know they can do it
because they've done it so many times before.
And of course, they came in after Renault at Red Bull with Adrian.
But of course, it was almost simultaneous that they decided,
Red Bull decided to do their own powertrain units.
But at least he's had experience of working with them.
The history of Red Bull was they were pretty brutal to Renault
with regard to not coming up to scratch.
And that came from Adrian as well as Christian.
And it came from Adrian, yeah.
And in fact, Adrian had said he was finished
and he was going to go and design yachts.
But it was only the switch from Renault to Honda,
which brought them back in.
He thought, oh, no, these guys are properly serious.
These guys are properly competitive and that's what brought them back.
So yeah, I don't think the relationship has been speculation
that this has been too damaging for the relationship to recover.
I don't think that's the case.
It's just Formula One is quite brutal sometimes, isn't it?
I think we mean with regard to Honda.
Yeah.
No, I think they learned their lesson a little bit with Renault.
I mean, you can't keep publicly humiliating.
I mean, with Honda, they are very sensitive to christen.
They don't like it, but it does get results.
And it does get occasionally.
I mean, I said a few things about the Mugen Honda.
And I did that because when I was with Jordan,
we had Mugen Honda engines and I just knew it wasn't good enough.
So I said so publicly.
But the reason I did it was because I remember Ayrton saying the engine's not good enough
and they were so desperate to provide him particularly
with the best equipment that they did something about it.
And so they do respond to that.
But then it's not the sort of thing that happens within Japan
being publicly critical of something.
So I don't know, as a culture, you have to have good reason.
And if you're a sufficient stature, someone like Adrian saying something,
I mean, obviously famously Fernando was insulting to them.
You know, and they were very upset about that.
And I suppose he was someone that they could dispense with.
But Adrian, they're in bed now with Aston Martin.
And of course, Ayrton, they were incredibly close to.
So they will respond to that.
They're uncomfortable, very uncomfortable about it.
But I think that what will happen is the only thing that can happen is change.
Yeah, I can't imagine, maybe you've got to bear an insight on this to me,
but I can't imagine Adrian going over it to Sakura and banging the table and shouting.
No, so Adrian, as far as Adrian going and banging tables.
Yeah, I've never seen him lose his temper.
I've never seen him sort of get cross.
I don't think he seems to, he'll moan a little bit and it seemed dissatisfied.
And that's about the extent of it.
But he's not dissatisfied.
It's a very good way of putting it.
He's actually not, he's not, it's lack of satisfaction.
He won't let it go.
He won't just go, oh, well, that's no good.
He'll keep, I think, explaining what he's not happy with and explaining
that there has to be some movement in the direction he wants to go.
And Andy Cowell is the guy who understands the power unit.
And it should be an ally of his when it comes to explaining how it should be with Honda.
And they've got to respect Andy Cowell.
So it's not like Adrian's being unreasonable.
Maybe Andy Cowell is going to be the Patrick Head part of what Adrian does.
If he stays around, but I'm not sure if Andy wants to stay around because
the insistence that Adrian has of having everything the way he wants it, I don't think
he was compatible with the role that Andy felt that he had.
And that's how it's ended up almost by default with Adrian being in complete charge of everything.
So it's that thing again, isn't it, that you're dancing on this very, very thin
ledge between spectacular success and really, it's not great, it is when you get out of that edge.
It's quite funny that he's been so critical of this electrical combustion formula.
He's just not a fan of it at all.
You know, it was Adrian that invented it.
And in late 90s, it was him that came up with the idea, what we're going to do is we're going to
put a battery in, we're going to take the energy from the brake and we're going to feel it in there.
We're going to get an extra 80 horsepower and the FIA immediately banned it before.
Right. So is there any in favor of it, if it was only them that we're going to benefit from it?
The FIA banned it before it ever ran.
And then it was the idea was reintroduced as a general thing for everyone.
But it's actually quite...
Well, I mean, scavenging wasted energy makes perfect sense because if you can do that,
you can reduce the fuel load. It's very difficult to get ahead of the curve,
isn't it, when it comes to the perfection, if you like, of petroleum, hydrocarbon, petroleum,
the energy density is better than anything you'll find anywhere else.
So trying to get better than that.
Really, the internal combustion engine is one of the most efficient things you can come with.
Yeah. And even then, your battery energy, you're only deriving it from the energy that's in the fuel.
Yeah. The energy did come from the fuel.
Yeah. But you're just getting back what we throw away into there.
That you would throw away otherwise.
We're through the brakes.
Yeah.
Which is tempting, isn't it, to go and go, well, we want some of that back.
How do we get it back? Oh, well, we'll store it in a battery.
And then you go, you're going to have to carry around 20 kilos of battery with you.
Yeah.
And we have to accelerate the 20 kilos as well.
Yeah. So, yeah, it's a conundrum.
But I mean, they are, as a package, the hybrids are very, very efficient.
I mean, and it's just that it adds another dimension to the packaging and so forth,
which is not ideal and not attractive.
Anyway, we are where we are now with these, the 26 regulations.
And I think Adrian, how long is this going to last before they get some sort of turnaround?
I mean, barely doing better than a team that's never done it before.
I think we won't really know where we're at until we get Honda sort of giving a, at least,
a representative of engine, because it's in very, very compromised form clearly at the moment.
And how long that takes.
But your question you're asking though, I think, and I didn't answer it or try to answer it was,
is there a point at which Adrian will bring about catastrophe?
Because he's pushing it to an extent, his competitiveness will get the better of him.
It's happened before, he didn't.
The unraced McLaren, it's the MP419, I think, that didn't race in 2003.
It was supposed to be the 2003 car.
But he argued that the only reason it was unsuccessful and didn't race was because there
were the constraints that were put upon him by Ron and Martin.
And that if he'd just been given free reign, we would have sort of the problem out.
And that the following year's car, which was very, very successful and very fast,
was actually what that car would have been if he'd just been left alone.
I'm trying to think of the guy's name.
He's a French designer, Philippe Stark.
And he said something along the lines of designers are fascists.
Yeah, yeah, they are.
They have to be.
It has to be this way because there's no way of fascism.
Perhaps a dictator is probably, I think you use the word fascist because,
insisting on it being the way you have the vision.
And I think Adrian is someone who will have a vision of perfection, his idea of perfection,
and will want to bring everyone on board with it and try and insist that they go,
and a bit like Moses, you know, everyone's going, well, where is this promised land?
You know, and we're not sure we're going to get there and we can't maybe see the same
land of milk and honey that you do.
And there'll be a point at which he has to just say, just trust me, we'll get there.
And then how long have you got before they go, maybe he's lost his mind?
And how long does Lawrence give it as well?
Lawrence, the owner of the team.
Under pressure, isn't he?
I mean, it's very difficult because you've got a car company attached to it as well.
With the tariffs, trying to sell cars in America with tariffs on top, it's going to be difficult.
Did you ever see, would you ever witness him railing against this control that Patrick had over him?
No, I wasn't, I mean, I wasn't in those meetings.
No.
So, I mean, I didn't ever get the sense that there was friction particularly.
I mean, laterally, I heard of some, but I mean, I thought he was quite,
I thought he was, if there was any animosity that was never shown, and I never, I was never
witnessed to it.
So it was just, Adrian's a naughty boy.
I think that's the way to live.
If you read his book, he was one of the kids at school who would,
he'd climb on the roof or whatever.
He did something, you're not supposed to do it.
Caused an explosion, I think.
Caused an explosion, which you're not supposed to do.
Yeah, and again, it's coming back to, I know they tell me you're not supposed to do this,
so what happens when you do it?
I want to find out what happens, which is, what's that, it's not just endearing,
but it is also, it's a sign of intelligence, isn't it?
You had someone trying to always find out, well, what happens if we do do it?
And you're never going to find out.
I mean, my dad famously was black flagged in one of his early races,
because he kept spinning off, and they brought him in and said,
you're a danger to everyone and yourself out there, because you keep spinning.
He said, yeah, but I'm trying to find the limit.
How do I know where the limit is if I don't spin off?
That's a good question.
I mean, there's the limit, there you are.
Yeah, so it does involve going over, and I spent ages trying to find this flip-in
YouTube story that I was listening to about the difference between a supernova and a black hole.
So it's the tipping point.
At some point, a dying star will do one of two things.
It will either implode or it'll explode.
But the thing that tips it is infinitesimally small, and this is the difference.
What is the straw that breaks the camel's back?
It literally is.
It comes down to a tiny thing.
There'll be one thing like those coins that fall off the edge.
There's one tiny little shove that's all it needs, and then suddenly it all goes over the edge.
We'll be watching this space.
We have to watch whether Adrian can deliver or whether there is just too much to do with this
Honda thing.
I mean, I have faith that he'll do it.
I think I get the sense with him.
He knows that this will resolve itself, and when you look back at the start of the season,
from the end of the season, there will be clear evidence that he's been on the right track all
along.
Yeah.
I want to find out.
It's not a given, though, is it?
I'll share your faith, but it's not a given.
It's not a given, no.
It could be the black hole.
It could be the black hole.
Could broaden the supernova.
From which no light will escape.
I like the idea that he's just this wonder and shaman, and that he's now found his natural
place.
Did he used to read Carlos Castaneda?
There was a shaman in there called Don Juan.
And Adrian is like the Formula One version of this guy that can pull stuff out of nowhere
that nobody else has thought of, and it makes you reconsider how you think of something.
Yeah.
And he's done that many times.
He's done that many times, and I know what you mean.
I mean, one of the interesting things for me is his left-handedness.
So I did read somewhere once that there was a disproportionate number of tennis players
and batsmen in cricket and stuff who were left-handed.
So if you take the average of left-handed for a ride, games where it involves conceiving
of three dimensions, people who are left-handed tend to be more architects who are left-handed,
for example.
So there's a kind of ability to see Adrian is left-handed famously if you see him writing.
He's holding his pen.
You can't see this on the podcast, but if you go on YouTube, you will see it.
But the way he holds his pen and he's drawing away with his left hand, it's not...
I mean, he is able, I think, to...
And he still famously does his pencil drawings.
And so they say that now that one of the best cures for dementia or losing your marbles
is to keep writing.
So there's something to do with your hand movement
and your brain visualizing or remembering something which is profound.
And I think that if he's...
Is it possible that because he's using a pencil, that part of his brain is continually developing,
or at least it's better than it is for people who work on computers?
And I think that there is a disconnect.
I mean, I've always found it very difficult with computers.
Where is the thing that...
You put it in a computer, but where is it?
I can never find the damn thing.
Whereas if you've got a sheet of drawing that you just put down in the corner,
you know where it is.
So your spatial awareness is live in a way that it perhaps isn't when you're working
with just a pure number or a computer.
So Adrian's...
That's why I keep going back to this artist.
So he...
And the other thing is...
The other thing that manifests that part of him is when he talks to drivers.
He's able to empathize with the driver.
And every driver he's worked in will tell you.
He's not just thinking, oh, well, if I do this to the car, then he'll feel that.
He's trying to understand what it is that the driver is experiencing.
And taking it as an indicator that his job is not done yet.
He hasn't given this person the tool that they can use.
Whereas most engineers, and I might be wrong, maybe some others,
but a lot of engineering is to do with producing the car that says it's good in the numbers.
It's that granular thing between the theory and the very human thing that the driver is feeling.
And quite a few very good driver coaches that specialize in that.
They're not so much the level that they're working in, quite high levels.
They're not so much telling the driver where to turn in and how to use the brakes.
It's way more advanced than that.
They're more the interpreter between the engineer and the driver.
And I think Adrian probably doesn't need that person in between.
I think partly because he's done some racing himself,
even though it's not at the same level, you get the sensation of the cars and you know
what the driver's talking about rather than it being some alien concept.
But I think it's also to do with that artistic thing that you talked about,
but where it's more about feel and intuition, not only engineering theory.
The thing about Adrian is he's interested.
If you start talking about something, if you say to him,
he really is interested in what it is, something nothing to do with for one.
And you get the sense that he does want to learn always from others what their experience is,
which is I think that's pretty unusual in our sport.
I think people are so unusually preoccupied with what they're doing and
to empathize with someone else's situation is quite uncommon.
But he's able to do that and they're seen as a necessary part of what he's doing as a designer.
I think also it's quite notable that whenever there's a new set of technical regulations,
they're always more restrictive than the previous set.
They're always more prescriptive, let's say.
And Adrian is always the first to say, oh, this has just taken all the creativity out of it.
And yeah, he always finds the little, it's almost like the task just becomes more intricate,
but it still, he finds where that is.
And he's always really good at finding straight away the sensitivity.
Well, quite commonly, he sort of gets the regulations go, oh, this is hopeless,
you know, and then a couple of months later, you'll say, actually,
when you look at it more closely, there's quite a lot of scope to do things I'm after.
And so yeah, it is, I mean, that's another thing altogether,
reading some regulations and interpreting them and understanding what they cover and what they
don't is almost, that's another skill.
Yeah, building a picture of the car on your head with a new set of regulations.
And also language as well.
So it's understanding, because you can't define, well, there's obviously a length
can be defined, you know, absolutely, absolutely.
So one meter is a meter, there's no argument and the kilo is a kilo.
So but when you say that no part of the car shall overhang the shadow created by the blah,
blah, blah, and when they try and get it, you know, they define the defining a kind of
a three dimensional object with words, that gets really difficult to do.
And so he's brilliant at spotting the gap there.
But it's a language skill, not a...
Yeah, and I think it's also driven by what he wants the air to do around the car.
And I think with his first McLaren, the 98 McLaren, it had that tub shape of the nose and
the first bit of the monocoque had the sort of horns on and it came down.
The regulations said it had to be defined the edges of the corner of the square.
And so everybody just made the corner of the square and he made the tops higher and then
brought everything in. And you think, oh, yeah, of course, because that's what he wants the air,
he wants the air to have a gap through there. So it's not even, he's not even looking at it and
saying, oh, right, what's the loophole here? He's thinking, how do I get the air and then looking
to see how it can be done? Well, that's like that. I always think that's a little bit like,
you know, when you're at school, they say, we want you in bed by eight o'clock or whatever.
You've got to do your homework by Tuesday or something.
He didn't say, well, he didn't say which Tuesday or something like that.
You know, this is Adrian Turti, I think. He's the cheeky chap who, you know,
he can outsmart the regulator and he gets some pleasure out of it too.
And he must go over there. I haven't covered that bit. All right, now let's see what I can do here.
And so, yeah, he thoroughly enjoys that thing. And I mean, he has had some,
he's a little bit Mr. Magoo. You know, Mr. Magoo was the famous guy who blunders into things
because he can't really see what's going on and everything's, everyone's crashing around him,
but he's sort of going, what's the problem? So it's a little bit like, you know,
he comes into the paddock and he's, there's all this stuff going on. I took a picture of him
actually coming into the paddock in Melbourne because it was so classic, Adrian. He's walking in
and there's this massive story going on about them not racing maybe or something like that.
And he just walks in completely, apparently completely oblivious to all the press in attraction
to him. But there's, there is an element of that. And he's, is also a risk taker because he's,
he's driven, he's crashed some of his GT40 crashed at Le Mans and stuff like that. He doesn't care.
He's, he will, he's quite, I don't know if it's brave or stupid, but he wants to have a go and he
loves racing and stuff. And he's famously crashed a motorbike right through the motorhome, apparently
at Williams one year when he got, a wheelie got out of control.
I didn't know that one. Yeah, apparently that's, was that when you were there?
I wasn't, that was before I got there. I'd love to have seen it.
Did you ever go motorbike with him?
I don't think I have. No, probably best to stay away from him.
Because he got his first job for the polity because Harvey Postal liked his bike.
They were the both of them. Was it Le Verde or something? What was it?
I think he had a motor go see Le Mans and I think Harvey had the Le Verde.
So they were both like immediately and then obviously he got the job.
Those were the good old days. The guy got chosen because you're into bikes.
But I'm sure there's a lot more to it than that.
Well, I mean, it was an inspired, inspired choice, wasn't it?
And you had Christian Dana famously sacked him as he's race engineer in Formula Two.
So the guy that didn't sign the Beatles.
I think he did two races with them and said, no, he's not good.
So yeah, are we, are we looking at, are we, are we looking at the, the black hole?
Black hole or the supernova?
Other supernova.
I'm going supernova.
Yeah, I'm going. It's champagne supernova.
Champagne supernova, of course you are.
Well, time will tell. How long we're going to give it?
Till the end of this season, I think it's reasonable.
End of the season, there's got to be signs of light coming out of the void.
The Athletic
About this episode
Damon Hill and Mark Hughes dig into Adrian Newey’s razor-thin margin between brilliance and disaster, using his Williams-era carbon-fiber packaging ideas and his tendency to push beyond known limits. They discuss how Newey’s “installation first, then make it work” approach has collided with real-world problems—especially Honda’s troubled power unit layout and battery packaging. The conversation also covers Newey’s clashes with team control systems, his empathy with drivers, and why new regulations often become puzzles he enjoys solving. They debate whether the current Honda/Aston Martin situation is a supernova—or a black hole.
In the latest episode of The Undercut, Damon Hill and Mark Hughes discuss legendary designer Adrian Newey, whose Aston Martin adventure has got off to a very shaky start. Newey is rightly regarded as one of the finest (if not the finest) technical minds to have ever graced Formula 1, but as Damon and Mark discuss, his boundary pushing designs and insistence on doing things his way mean he sometimes walks a tightrope between triumph and disaster. The question is, with almost unlimited control at Aston Martin, can he turn the Silverstone team into winners or has he bitten off more than he can chew?
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