Q&A with Adrian Newey

What are the two key regulation changes for this season?

This season we have two big regulation changes. The first one we have known for some time is the engine change. We’ve gone from the normally aspirated 18000rpm V8 to the turbo charged 1.6litre V6 with a much higher electrical content, so KERS in layman terms, and a very strict fuel consumption. So, we not only have a100 kilo of fuel for the race but we have a max flow rate. The previous engines for reference were using 160kilos, so it’s a big reduction in fuel. That of course means there will be a lot of strategy in the race. Most of the races we anticipate will be fuel capacity limited, so we will have to save fuel through the race, which will mean a different driving styles, compromising lap time at times to save fuel which means how so you then use your remaining fuel? Do you go out quick at the start and then save fuel, or save fuel and then sprint at the end –all that will come in to play.

It’s a big technical challenge, they are hugely complicated engines compared to the V8s to install. The V8 is a well-known package, with these engines, the engines itself is easy enough to install, but then you have the turbo charger, the intercoolers, the electrical side in terms of the motor generated units where the batteries are bigger. That means bigger conditioning boxes for the batteries and also more cooling for the batteries, so more radiators on top. So roughly speaking the radiator area on the car has doubled compared to V8, so that is another challenge. How do you cool the car with such a big heat rejection requirements? It’s the biggest engine change without a doubt since the turbos disappeared in the late 80s – arguably much bigger because of all of the electrical side of it. So you have that to cope with. Renault our Partner is the big player there in terms of the package itself, our job is to install it in the neatest and best way we can.

Then the next big change is around the aerodynamics. What sounds quite a small change, which is a 75mm reduction in the width of the wing on each side (which was done to reduce the chances of a wing being knocked off when two cars touch), has had a big aerodynamic affect. Before, the front wing end plate allowed us to put the flow off the tip of the wing outside of the front wheel, but now the front wing end is right in front of the wheel – it’s about in the worst possible place. It’s not inside or outside, so that means the majority of the flow now stagnates in front of the front wheel, a little bit finds its way outside and the rest comes inside and in doing so makes quite a mess. The front wheel wake becomes much bigger and that causes all sorts of problems downstream as you approach the side pod and diffuser. On top of that you have a lowered nose which I think has been done on the grounds of safety, it’s supposed to reduce the changes chances of a car being launched if one car hits another as happened with Mark in Valencia a couple of years ago. It’s a funny regulation, what it does it calls for a maximum side view height – and then on top of that there’s an area 15 mm behind the front of the nose which we have to meet and that area is quite low down, much lower than the side view, so what you end up is with almost two noses – one which is the main bulk of the nose to the minimum side view height and then almost a bulb sticking out from that to satisfy the area rule much lower down. So I think there will be a few ungainly noses which is a shame, to me aesthetic of a F1 car is important, they should look good and not many owners of these noses could really love them.

This has been called the biggest set of regulation changes to ever take place in Formula One. How big a challenge has it been to get the RB10 ready in time?

Last season whilst it appeared very easy in terms of number of wins and points that we had at the end of the year – at the critical area around August then it was a very tight battle. Mercedes seemed to be having good impetus, Ferrari and Fernando had had a very good start to the season and couldn’t be ignored, so we were feeling far from comfortable that it would be an easy ride through the rest of the year to the end of the Championship. So we put a lot of development into the development on RB9 through June, July and September and inevitably that brings with it the compromises that we only have limited recourses and while we were developing RB9 it mean that work wasn’t going into the new car – the RB10. Given the magnitude of the regulation changes, it was without a doubt a compromise compared to what we would have ideally liked to do, but we felt we needed to do that to try and win the Championship we were in and then handle the pressure of timescales that resulted from that decision. So I think that time really has been our biggest battle. We haven’t had the time we would have liked to do the research on the background before committing to the fundamental hardware of monocoque and gearbox case.

Will this year’s regulation changes affect qualifying at races?

The regulation changes in qualifying will probably be less of an effect in terms of strategy because the fuel consumption will be limited, the total fuel used is irrelevant for qualifying and then the electrical uses, KERS etc., is simply using programmes to optimize, so I don’t think the regulation changes in terms of the engine will have a big effect from a strategy point of view. It may well be that some engines perform better in qualifying because fuel consumption is less of an issue than in the race. Equally there’s other factors like tyre useage that may come into play. We may have a similar case to last year where some cars are easy on their tyres, so struggle to warm them up and make them work in qualifying , but then have a very good race pace and vice versa.

How long do you think it will take for the racing to settle down this season?

Early races could see quite a few upsets in the order. Reliability is the most obvious concern, the engine and power unit is tremendously complicated and while a road car manufacturer make some quite complicated hybrid cars, those cars have had the luxury of years of development before they come to market. We’ve got three tests so around 12 days and then off to the first race, so it’s a very compressed development schedule and with something so complicated that can bring a lot of problems, pressures and breakdowns, so reliability will be an issue at the start of the season. Equally, everyone finding their feet in terms of how to use their engines and best cope with the fuel limits and the aero changes and how to make those work with the tyres. We have harder tyres this year, which were made harder to cope with the extra torque of the engines, all those things could make for quite an unpredictable melting pot in the first few races.

You have an well proven driver on one side of the garage and a less experienced guy on the other. The team obviously rates Daniel very highly. How would you describe Daniel’s abilities as he embarks on his first season with the team?

I think Daniel though the junior formulae and in the last two years at STR has shown a good pace. He’s a naturally fast driver, we listened to his feedback when he drove our car at the Silvertsone tyre test last season and he gave good feedback and that’s all very positive. Obviously now it’s a matter of the team and driver getting to know each other and working together and seeing how he gets on and how his feedback is and hopefully it will complement Seb’s as Mark did in the previous seasons, so it’s a slight journey into the unknown as, although he’s been a member of the Red Bull family for seven years, he’s been in a different team, so we don’t know him that well. Hopefully it will be good and I’m looking forward to it.

This is the team’s 10th season – what’s been your best moment from the past nine seasons?

Obviously the first win in China was very special. We’d had the big regulation change over the winter which we had managed to read quite well and so we were suddenly in the unusual position where ourselves and Brawn, who hadn’t been regular front runners previously, were now regular front runners! To win the first race was a special moment. To win both championships the following year was fairly magical. The Constructors’ was looking reasonable, so when we won that in Brazil that was a great feeling but because one week later we had the drivers still to settle it didn’t really sink in and we didn’t appreciate the success as the job wasn’t finished. When we got the double at the end that was an amazing feeling. To have done it and after such a short time to have beaten the world’s best – that will always go down as one of the greatest moment. Then to stay at the top for three more seasons and show we weren’t a flash in the pan.

Have you enjoyed designing the RB10?

Yes I have – it’s been a lot of pressure. It’s been a lot of long hours for everyone in the factory. It was a very compressed design schedule as we chose to continue to design the RB9. That really put pressure on for all of us to hit the deadlines. But pressure can be a good thing, it can be stimulating; it doesn’t always seem so when you’re leaving the factory at some unsocial hour in the evening then gulping down supper and going to bed, but sometimes creativity comes out of those high pressure environments, so we shall see. It’s certainly been busy and now it’s that time if trepidation where we wait to see if there are nasty shocks we haven’t understood and to see what everyone else been up to over the winter. We’ve no idea where we are compared to our rivals, so it will be a slightly nervous time seeing where we are at the upcoming tests.