The Constructors Cup, won by the Formula One team that has clinched victory by the points earned over the whole year of racing, was awarded to the Red Bull team after a dominant victory by Max Verstappen in the Japanese Grand Prix held over the weekend. This has drawn a lot of attention to the design of the winning car, the Red Bull Racing RB19, which was new to this year of racing and had already recorded 14 wins and 22 podium finishes.
What would account for the RB19’s success? Could it be the 1.6-liter turbocharged Honda engine that revs up to 15,000 RPM and produces 900 HP—a third more power than the Cummins XD15 semitruck engine almost 10 times its size? Could it be the aero surfaces, several of which hang off its front, preceding the car by a country mile? Probably neither the engine nor the aero surfaces by themselves could provide an answer to Red Bull’s invincibility. The other Formula One teams have similar engines and aero surfaces.
Of course, the driver, Max Verstappen, deserves much of the credit for Red Bull's success. When accepting the Constructors Cup, Verstappen was gracious in thanking the whole Red Bull team for the victory.
A big part of that team is Red Bull Racing’s chief technical officer, Adrian Newey. In our search to find out more about the car and its chief of technology, it was the latter that yielded the biggest surprise.
At a time when racing cars sport multiple aerodynamic surfaces and resemble aircraft as much as cars, it is understandable how someone who has an intrinsic grasp of air movement would have the advantage.
“He’s the only bloke that can see air,” said Christian Horner, CEO of Red Bull F1 Team, based in Milton Keynes in the U.K.
Maybe not the first, though. The ability to “see air” was also attributed to famous the aircraft designer, Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, founder of Lockheed’s Skunk Works, according to his successor and biographer, Ben Rich.
Newey was “a bit depressed” to see the latest regulations imposed by Formula One regarding the amount and type of aerodynamic surfaces allowed on future F1 cars that would have repressed Red Bull’s innovative designs, but the F1 teams have found enough wiggle room so that the RB19 was not all that severely impacted by the regulations.
Newey and Johnson certainly do have their similarities. Both are very old-school, instinctive engineers. Newey, interviewed by Nicola Hume on a Red Bull video podcast looks like he’d much rather be in the shop—or over his board.
Board?? Yes, you read that correctly. That's “board” as in drafting board. And he is adamant about advantage the a board gives him.
By the time computers were available to engineers, Newey had 15 years of experience using the drafting board and he was not about to give it up. He has come to understand the use of computers by his team but actually using them himself would be like speaking “a foreign language” and feels he could “never be as good” as a native speaker.
That may be hard to get your head around if you are a digital native, raised on computers, but it must be pointed out that the SR-71 was designed and analyzed by Kelly’s Skunk Works using slide rules. It remains to this date the fastest (Mach 3 plus) and highest-flying aircraft in the world.
Asked what he would submit to the FormulaOne Hall of Fame, should there was one, Newey volunteers his notebook. In it are all his sketches.
The 64-year-old Newey is still most comfortable with “pencil and rubber.” That’s what the English call erasers. He has his people convert his sketches to CAD. He concedes that these days everything has to be digital.
A predilection for a drafting board is an astonishing admission for the head of engineering of an enterprise on the leading edge of technology on the surface of the Earth. Here, the need for speed calls for the lightest, strongest materials and parts and the sleekest shapes. To complicate matters, both the driver and car must survive the race, with the driver completely intact. This requires that the car stay on the ground and under control and involves a harmony of aerodynamics and vehicle dynamics. All that takes computers, right?
Newey understands that CAD and CAE tools are essential to success on the Formula One circuit. He hands off his sketches and his team makes the 3D designs and applies simulation, including computational fluid dynamics (CFD).
With Red Bull’s success, who are we to argue with Newey’s approach?