Adrian Newey

Adrian Newey did it again. After winning races and titles with both Williams and McLaren he ended his winless streak and added another race win to his already impressive tally of Formula 1 race wins.

Williams raced Newey built cars between 1991 and 1997 winning 59 races in the process (Red Bull’s website says 58, I counted 59). McLaren relied on Newey car design between 1998 and 2005 winning 41 races in that period. I am not sure if all these 100 race wins can be contributed to Newey’s design or not. I haven’t found any source that would state this high number of race wins for Newey built cars, most sources say “over 80″. What we can say for sure now is that he has won one more.

Many people believed that it is only matter of time before Newey designed Red Bull car wins a race. But I think no too many expected that it will be STR instead of RB …

The STR03 first appeared in April test in Barcelona and scored first points on its race debut in Monaco. Then came it’s ninth race weekend, the pole position and the win.

Photo: Red Bull/GEPA

F1Wolf

labels: plugin code here

It is obvious now that Adrian Newey has started a trend to follow. First it was the Red Bull during the Barcelona test back in February. In April, again in Barcelona, Renault came up with their version of finned engine cover and Toro Rosso introduced the Red Bull clone.

Force India were next to follow. Hoping to close the gap to the midfield they tested several aero updates 2 weeks ago at Silverstone. The fin was one of them. And yesterday we could see the first “finned” McLaren in action at the Hockenheim test… Half the grid has the fin now.

I am not sure how much advantage this thingy actually brings. But all the teams that have tested the weird looking engine cover went on racing with it. None of the teams has dropped it since. It looks like the shark fin is here to stay, at least till the end of the 2008 season.

Who will try it next ?

The “shark fin gallery” inside the post.

Read the rest of this entry »

F1Wolf

labels: plugin code here