EXCLUSIVE: Newey on the RB17 hypercar, his ‘amazing ride’ at Red Bull and what’s next

Adrian Newey is one of the star names at this weekend’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, with the legendary F1 designer unveiling his and Red Bull’s new hypercar as well as piloting some historic machinery up the famous hill. During a break in his commitments, F1.com sat down with the Briton to get the lowdown on the eye-catching creation, reflect on his time at Red Bull and ponder what lies ahead…

F1.com has just arrived at Red Bull’s Energy Station from a separate conversation with two-time world champion Emerson Fittipaldi, whose family-run team gave a young Newey his first chance in the top echelon as a budding aerodynamicist back in the early-1980s.

READ MORE: Red Bull RB17 hypercar makes world debut at Goodwood Festival of Speed

“A great guy,” says Newey with a smile as we settle into our conversation, adding that “I owe my career in motor racing in many ways to his team.”

A career that has yielded more than 200 Grand Prix wins plus a whopping 12 constructors’ titles and 13 drivers’ titles across stints at Williams, McLaren and Red Bull.

The Newey-designed RB17 arrives

And now, the latest addition to his incredible CV: the RB17.

Designed, developed and manufactured in-house at Red Bull Advanced Technologies, it features a two-seat carbon fibre monocoque chassis with a mid-mounted V10 engine and a carbon fibre gearbox.

The result? A top speed of more than 350 kph and F1-equivalent lap times in the right hands.

READ MORE: An innovator and trendsetter – Adrian Newey’s greatest F1 contributions

For Newey, it was a chance to get his creative juices flowing again after a similar side project several years ago in the form of Aston Martin’s Valkyrie hybrid sportscar.

“Yeah, absolutely,” he says, when asked to delve into the process behind the RB17, of which 50 will be made, and whether it was enjoyable to work on such a different design.

“I guess there’s a number of years I’ve been in F1 that to keep myself fresh and avoid going stale, I feel sometimes I need other projects to kind of give inspiration and so forth so that when I’m in F1, I’m not feeling as if I’m always doing the same thing.

“The Valkyrie was the first project in that mould, then I kind of started to think what can be the next project? I didn’t want to simply do Valkyrie 2, it had to be something different. I pondered that for quite a while.

“I’ve been lucky enough over the years to have driven lots of different cars from 1960s cars, racing at the [Goodwood] Revival and so forth, through to modern F1 cars. The exhilaration, the speed and the sensations you get from that are something else.”

READ MORE: Newey opens up on when he first thought about leaving Red Bull as he admits to feeling ‘a little bit tired’

An F1 experience for the inexperienced

He continues: “I started to think, ‘Okay, could we come up with a car which would be accessible to drivers with relatively limited track experience and they could then grow with the car?’

“The model I kind of pictured in my own head, if you like, is say you decide you want to start playing golf, then you go to a golf club, hit a few balls and the balls go flying everywhere, but you enjoy it. Then you think, ‘Right, I want to get better at this’, so you employ a caddie, coach…

“Part of the enjoyment is playing the game, and part of it is [helping] yourself to become better at the game, and this is trying to take that same model.”

As touched on above, the RB17 – in its optimum performance window and with a capable driver at the wheel – can hit F1 levels of speed.

This is thanks to a “very adaptable” range of settings controlled by a few knobs in the cockpit.

READ MORE: Brundle backs ‘competitive animal’ Newey to stay in F1 as he pinpoints what potential next team must have

In Newey’s words, “if you want a more forgiving car or more stable car, you turn the knob one way, and if you want something that’s more reactive, then you go the other way, so you can basically grow with the car as you get better”.

The final part of Newey’s Red Bull journey

With Red Bull announcing a few months ago that Newey will be leaving the team in early 2025, almost two decades on from his arrival in 2006, the suggestion is put to him that RB17 serves as a fitting end to his time at the organisation.

“As it’s turned out, yes,” Newey replies. “I mean, it was never intended that way, of course. When we started the car in very early 2021, I never kind of even considered that I would be no longer with the team come ’25, or going into Q2 of ’25, so in that sense yes, it is.

“But, having said that, I will continue to be involved in the development of the RB17 through production and so forth. I’ve really put a lot of time into this in terms of evenings and weekends, trying to fit it in with F1.

“I certainly want to see it through to completion. The shareholders at Red Bull, Christian [Horner, Red Bull team boss], everybody else is very supportive of that, so I will be still involved on this side of things.”

READ MORE: Hunger, ingenuity and modesty – How ‘Einstein of F1’ Newey helped transform Red Bull’s fortunes

And how about that run at Red Bull?

There was the first podium finish during his first season with the team, then the first wins in 2009, then the sensational run of four successive constructors’ titles and four successive drivers’ titles with Sebastian Vettel from 2010 to 2013.

While the start of the turbo-hybrid era in 2014 proved more challenging, wins have followed in every season since bar one, and 2021 brought a return to championship-winning ways after Max Verstappen beat Mercedes rival Lewis Hamilton to the drivers’ crown in dramatic circumstances.

And, after the 2022 rules reset that triggered a new ‘ground effect’ era, Red Bull have enjoyed another wave of success – winning back-to-back titles for the last two campaigns and sitting atop both the drivers’ and constructors’ standings this year.

“It’s been just such an amazing ride, it really has,” says Newey as he takes a moment to reflect. “I was at McLaren before Red Bull and we had a very good little car in 2005, won 10 races, but I just felt I needed a new challenge. Joining Red Bull, frankly, was a big career risk, I think a lot of people thought it was suicidal.

READ MORE: Our writers share their views on where they’d love to see Adrian Newey next after his Red Bull departure

“Really, it was just the ambition of trying to build the team up, and with the hope that one day we could win a race. [We could] never, ever conceive or think that the level of success that we eventually had would be what’s happened since.”

Well-deserved “holiday time” for an F1 legend

But that partnership is now coming to an end. At least on the F1 side.

As for what the next few months look like, Newey makes clear that while his duties at Red Bull have shifted, he is “still working” as the RB17 project comes to life – ensuring the car is completed as intended and customers get the ultimate experience.

“The plus is that we’re in a very important stage of RB17 now in terms of detail drawing release,” he says. “We’ve still got some aerodynamic work to do on the parts that haven’t been fixed yet.

“We’ve got all the considerations of how we go about the servicing plan, servicing costs, how all that works, so there’s a lot of work to be completed in the next six months or so. So, with no F1 duty, I can now concentrate on that.

READ MORE: Newey sets final deadline for decision over F1 future as speculation rumbles on

“At the same time, [I can] also take a bit of holiday time. I’ve been kind of in the business pretty much non-stop for a long time now, so having a little bit of a break is nice!”

What’s next? “Everything else is a bonus”

It begs the question of what will come after that break.

Fans all over the world are wondering if another Adrian Newey-designed car will grace the grid in the future, while keeping their fingers crossed that he decides to embark on another F1 adventure and be part of their favourite team’s future.

Asked if there’s a sense of pride from all the nice things people have been saying about him in recent weeks and months, the 65-year-old states: “Yeah, it is.

“I have to admit, I don’t read the press very much, but of course I hear [things]. Amanda, my wife, kind of follows it and gives me a rough update, so yes, it’s very flattering, of course.”

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Pushed on whether there’s one more stint in him, he adds: “Ultimately, it’s not why I do the job. From the age of 10 or 11 I always wanted to be a designer in motor racing, and I’ve managed to achieve that, so everything else is a bonus really.

“My passion has always been trying to add performance to cars, to race cars, so the rest is, of course, part of it, but it’s not what wakes me up and motivates me.”

It remains to be seen, then, what one of the sport’s greatest brains will decide to do next – whether that’s in or out of F1 – but the newly-launched RB17 shows there are still plenty of bright ideas swirling around in his mind…