The way F1 is changing Aston Martin

Adrian Newey is one of the most successful designers in the history of Formula One. And now he is changing the way Aston Martin design cars.

Newey, currently Red Bull Racing's chief technical officer, has designed 10 world championship winning cars for Williams, McLaren and Red Bull during his career. As part of Aston Martin's partnership with the energy drink owned F1 team Newey is part of the team building the new Valkyrie hypercar.

Newey is in charge of the engineering design and shaping the car's aerodynamics while long-time Aston Martin chief creative officer Marek Reichman is responsible for the final styling.

Red Bull Racing chief technical officer Adrian Newey. Photo: Red Bull Content Pool

Speaking to Drive during a brief visit to Sydney this week Aston Martin chief executive officer Andy Palmer revealed the impact Newey is having on the company.

"Tension," Palmer said. "It's tough, you could do a PhD in management around managing the disciplines of Adrian, Marek and David King... David's in charge of actually making the car. Marek is in charge of the aesthetic design and Adrian is in charge of the engineering design.

"What Adrian does is he constantly challenges everything and that creates a tension. Firstly, can you make the thing and can you make it legal on the road. And then does it impact on the beauty of the car. Then you've got these three people but also these three disciplines in constant tension. My job is to somehow play the conductor of that group. At some stage you've got to say 'Adrian, stop meddling, we've got to get on with execution.'

"What it does do and what it has done is all of the things that you thought were 'it's just how it was' he questions them all, and that's interesting.

"One of our competitors is quoted as saying 'Valkyrie is impossible' and they're right, it's impossible for them. What's interesting, basically because we're a small company, because we're agile, because Adrian is challenging all the time that we can make that car."

Palmer hopes that Newey's attitude of questioning conventional wisdom will rub off onto the rest of the Aston Martin team and have an impact on future models that Newey isn't personally involved in.

"That's what I want," Palmer said. "That will be the real legacy of the car, not just the car itself, but that attitude and behaviour."

Marek Reichman and Adrian Newey with the Aston Martin Valkyrie. Photo: Red Bull Content Pool

Reichman admits he has long been a fan of Newey's work and has enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate with him on a road car project.

"He approaches design from a very, very different perspective," Reichman told Drive. "It's just been entertaining in every respect. But there is a lot of mutual respect between us and that has been the wonderful part of it.

"We both had a similar passion for simplicity and purity and beauty. His beauty comes from the fact that he's able to recognize what a surface would do to air, and use his knowledge of how to tune that to get the maximum effect of how that surface is pushing through the air, to either create turbulence or reduce turbulence."

Reichman echos Palmer's comments about Newey's influence carrying over to future models. Specifically Newey's understanding of aerodynamics was one of the key learnings for Reichman and his team, particularly as the brand moves into mid-engined sports cars after so long shaping front-engined grand tourers.

"As we look to our mid-engine car obviously we'll draw down from that product because Valkyrie is going to be the game-changing hypercar that after Valkyrie you maybe have to think of another name than hypercar because it won't be repeated," Reichman said.

"There's so much learning in that in terms of material science, aerodynamics, the trickery of aerodynamics, the unexplained magic of aerodynamics and packaging efficiency and process and how you can tune a new computational fluid dynamics and the technique an F1 company uses compared to a traditional car company. So there are so many synergies and possibilities to make change."

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