Adrian was kicked out of school after hijacking a school concert soundcheck and blowing up a stained glass window, and he later lost his first trackside engineering job when the driver mistakenly felt his car wasn't given enough fuel. Adrian recalls: The issue was, in fact, a gasoline leak, which I'm happy to report.
But, in any case, I was dismissed very immediately, and the driver requested if he might have a different engineer! Such admissions are typical of Newey's calm humility, yet underneath the slightly donnish exterior and self-effacement lurks a highly competitive spirit who would never settle for second best.
It's a characteristic he's brought to every position he's occupied throughout the course of his long and illustrious career. Newey initially found success in American racing after studying aeronautics at Southampton University and early spells with the Fittipaldi and March F1 Teams (which featured the aforementioned incident with Christian Danner in 1982).
In 1983 and 1984, his March sports car design won the IMSA GTP class, while his IndyCar vehicle, the March 85C, won the championship and the Indianapolis 500.
The follow-up model won the championship in 1986 and the Indy 500 in both 1986 and 1987, but F1 was beckoning, and Newey was at Williams by 1990 following a brief stint with March. Between 1991 and 1997, he won five Constructors' Championships with Patrick Head, making champions of Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Jacques Villeneuve, and Alain Prost.
When Newey left Williams for new challenges at McLaren, he added three more championships to his resume, completing the decade with the 1998 Constructors' title and two Drivers' titles for Mika Hakkinen. After leading both Williams and McLaren to several championship victories in the 1990s, Newey's task when he joined Red Bull Racing in 2006 was a little different.
The end goals were the same, but Adrian wasn't joining a renowned F1 institution with a cabinet full of trophies; instead, he was joining a fledgling team just getting started, with the opportunity to shape its development from the ground up. He didn't waste any time in delivering his message.
In 2007 and 2008, his RB3 and RB4 cars made steady improvement, but the extensive rule revisions for 2009 were a watershed moment for Newey and Red Bull Racing. Given a level playing field, Newey's innovative RB5 led the team to its maiden victory in China, when Sebastian Vettel claimed the chequered flag during the third race of the season.
During the season, the RB5 won another five races and ended second in the Constructors' Championship. The next season, the squad improved even more. Red Bull Racing won their first Constructors' Championship with nine victories for the RB6, while Vettel also won the Drivers' Championship. While 2010 was a nail-biter, 2011 was the RB7's year of complete supremacy.
Newey's RB7 achieved 18 pole positions, 12 wins, 15 other podium places, and ten fastest laps as a refinement of the same principles utilized in the RB5 and RB6. Adrian and his design team's concepts won both championships with plenty of races and surprisingly little fuss.
Adrian confesses that the challenge of learning new rules appeals to him more than the traditional F1 chore of grinding out little, incremental gains.
His track record with a blank sheet of paper is unblemished; his ability to recognize the potential in a new ruleset and notice things that others don't distinguish him - In 2012, it needed all of his talents to imagine the vehicle that led Red Bull Racing to their third consecutive Drivers' and Constructors' Championships.
Adrian and the technical team had to dig deep to create another winning platform after regulatory changes stripped the vehicle of design characteristics that had been critical to its predecessors' success. In the end, the RB8 won seven races and was placed on the podium in another seven.
Red Bull Racing became the fourth team in Formula One history to win three straight Constructors' titles, with eight pole positions and seven fastest laps. Newey's dedication extends beyond his drawing board (he still uses one), and he is an avid amateur racer in his leisure time.
A Red Bull Racing RB5 was handed to him by a thankful team, but he's oddly cautious about whether or not he'll ever drive it in anger!
