Newey reveals the secrets of F1 design espionage

10:35, 01 Nov

Updated: 13:52, 01 Nov

byBen Winship

Adrian Newey is often seen examining rival cars on the Formula One grid, keenly jotting down thoughts with his notepad in hand.

The Aston Martin Managing Technical Partner revealed the two reasons why he likes to observe competitors’ designs in person, sharing inside details on the game technical espionage that takes place up and down the F1 grid.

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He told the James Allen on F1 podcast: “I think all teams have effectively spy photographers.

“Generally speaking the other teams know who those spy photographers are and run around trying to cover things up.

“So we end up with god knows how many thousand pictures each race weekend. You then try to use whatever software to categorize them et cetera.

“But nevertheless, you've got this huge amount of photographs which you could easily spend the next week looking through if you weren't careful.

Nicknamed ‘the man who can see air’, Newey has an old-school approach towards F1 design. He prefers sketching his ideas onto a drawing board and finds it a more intuitive process to modern CAD (computer-aided design) technology.

Adrian Newey's trademark stance with his notepad in hand - Photo: RacePictures

His fondness for in-person examinations of rival cars follows the same mould.

“I look at cars on the grid for two reasons.

“First of all because the photographs you get are clearly in 2D and quite often they're not quite the angle you're interested in.

“Secondly, it's just time efficient to be perfectly honest. I've hopefully got enough of an eye that I can spot something of interest that, by looking at it in 3D, I would spend ages trying to find in a 2D series of 2000 photos or whatever it might be.”

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