Adrian Newey is Chief Technical Officer for Red Bull Racing.  He has won 13 drivers’ championships and 12 constructors’ championships across three teams in his career. He is widely regarded as the greatest Formula 1 race car designer in the history of the sport.

 

Some interesting insights from this episode:

• Racing teams have three departments: aerodynamics, vehicle design, and vehicle dynamics/simulation. Because Adrian had worked in each of those disciplines, it provided a more holistic perspective when designing racing cars.
• A good design engineer must be both left brained and right brained – that is, combining the artistic imaginative left side with the analytical and practical right side.
• He is still old school in that he prefers a drawing board and pencil over CAD (computer aided design) systems.
• No matter how successful you are, you’ve got to keep pushing and you’ve got to stay sharp or you’ll lose your edge.
• If you can learn to manage the pressure, your subconscious brain will spend more time focused on the problem and can come up with a solution when you least expect it.
• “Excellence is doing something to the ultimate. To the best of one’s ability at that time.”