Adrian Newey gives ‘really special’ verdict after driving title-winning Ferrari at Goodwood

Adrian Newey.

Adrian Newey said it was “really special” after he got behind the wheel of his old friend Niki Lauda’s Ferrari 312T at Goodwood.

Lauda won his World Championship with the 312 and set one of the biggest margins between first and second place in F1 history and even five years after his death, it remains one of the iconic vehicles of the sport’s history.

Adrian Newey reacts to driving Niki Lauda’s 312

Plenty of focus at the Goodwood Festival of Speed this year is on Newey but while he has spent a lot of his time speaking about the Red Bull hypercar he designed, on Saturday morning he was able to talk about another car, one he played no part in the designing of.

He climbed aboard Lauda’s 312 to drive up the Goodwood hill and described the moment as “really special”.

“To to be driving Niki’s old car, his Championship-winning car, is so special it really is,” Newey said. “I knew Niki quite well and so to be in here sitting in the same seat and and just trying to think what he must have been experiencing and how he’s prepared himself before the start and everything is really special.”

Newey’s run was one of many made in honour of Lauda and the Red Bull designer said it was a “fitting tribute” to one of F1’s most well-known names.

“It’s absolutely amazing and a very fitting tribute to him,” Newey said. “The cars are so different. I mean, I love these cars. The Lotus 49 from ’67, ’68 was the first car I really sort of started to look at and then by the time we got to this car, then I was 15, I did a painting of it actually for my art project.

More on Adrian Newey’s RB17 masterpiece

Red Bull RB17: The £5million hypercar that now has Adrian Newey’s full focus

Red Bull launch highly-anticipated RB17 with huge Adrian Newey imprint

“Looking at the engineering back then, it must have been a fascinating area to work in because on the plus side you had a rule book which is about two pages but the budgets are relatively small, and I think much more importantly, you didn’t have the research tools.

“The design part was done primarily on gut instinct. Wind tunnels were just starting so it must have been fascinating.”
Newey’s own magnum opus was unveiled on Friday before its own run up the Goodwood hill on Sunday.

The unique design is a two-seater powered by a V10 naturally aspirated engine that Red Bull say will produce in excess of 1,000bhp, supplemented by a 200bhp electric motor featuring an energy recovery system [ERS] that has now been a long-standing feature of Formula 1 cars.

The car itself will be designed around a carbon composite tub that will use ground effect aerodynamics – the same style used on Formula 1 cars – generating significant downforce from the floor the car, all while weighing less than 900kg.

Due to the lack of technical restrictions on the car, the RB17 will also feature some of Newey’s most famous Formula 1 innovations from his time in the sport, such as active suspension that propelled Williams to dominance in the early 1990s, as well as blown exhausts, an innovation that catapulted Red Bull towards the front of the field in 2009.

Read next: Exclusive: The inside story of Williams’ incredible start to the F1 turbo hybrid era