Adrian Newey talks about the “challenge” he had to face at the beginning of his time at Red Bull – the team lacked self-confidence
When Adrian Newey leaves Red Bull for Aston Martin in 2025, he will do so with at least 13 world championship titles under his belt. That’s how many the partnership between Newey and the Bulls has produced so far, with two more possible this season.
Red Bull and Newey won their first two world championship titles in 2010. Newey had already started working with the Bulls in 2006, but it took some time before they were able to celebrate their first race victory in 2009 and their first title a year later.
In the High Performance podcast, the now 65-year-old admits that he “underestimated” a certain “challenge” at the beginning of his time in Milton Keynes. He assumed that he was joining a team with a certain amount of self-confidence.
“Red Bull was a start-up team,” recalls Newey, ‘but strictly speaking it was the remnants of the Jaguar team. So as a team, they already had something.’ Red Bull had taken over the Jaguar team at the end of 2004 and competed under the new name for the first time in 2005.
Red Bull had “lost faith in itself”
A year later, Newey, who had previously worked for an established top team at McLaren, joined the project. And while McLaren had only just missed out on the 2005 World Championship title, Red Bull had only finished seventh in the World Championship.
“They had lost faith in themselves,“ recalls Newey, adding that the team didn’t believe ‘they could win.’ His job, therefore, was to restore that self-confidence.
”The other aspect was the infrastructure,” adds Newey, revealing: ”The wind tunnel was underdeveloped. […] Many of the simulation tools were very basic or didn’t even exist.” It took some time to make progress on this front as well.
The new regulations for the 2009 season marked a turning point in Red Bull’s history. After finishing seventh in the 2008 World Championship, the team took its first Formula 1 victory in 2009 and finished the year as runner-up in both championships.
By 2010, self-confidence should no longer have been a problem. Between 2010 and 2013, the bulls won both world championships four times in a row.