Adrian Newey is responsible for many winning Formula One cars. No fewer than eleven drivers' titles and ten constructors' titles have been won in cars designed by him, and a professional has experience with many great names in the sport. How does Max Verstappen compare to these great champions?
Adrian Newey is responsible for many winning Formula One cars. No fewer than eleven drivers' titles and ten constructors' titles have been won in cars designed by him, and a professional has experience with many great names in the sport. How does Max Verstappen compare with these great champions?
With Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Mika Hakkinen, and Sebastian Vettel, Newey has worked with some of the greatest drivers in history. He prefers not to compare them, as they drove at different times and all had their own way of driving and sharing feedback. Thus, the 63-year-old designer rejects the suggestion that there is anything specific that defines a champion.
He says, however, that Verstappen is definitely one of the big names. "Max is up there," he said in an interview with The Evening Standard. "He's very calm in general, very measured, has tremendous reflexes and is a pleasure to work with."
One area where the drivers differ greatly in their experience is in how they give feedback. Vettel was the most elaborate, according to Newey, while Mika Hakkinen's messages were very concise.
"Mika didn't talk much and sometimes you had to translate what he was saying, but if you translated those 10 words correctly, they were very insightful," explains Red Bull's technical director.
He adds that good drivers know what they want from the car and know how to communicate with their engineer about what they want and how to get it.