Winning combination
One is probably the most brilliant and successful designer in the history of Formula 1; the other is the best driver of his generation, already capable of hoisting himself – at just 25 years of age – among the six men capable of winning the most races in the history of Formula 1. They are Adrian Newey And Max Verstappen and their combination, within the Red Bull team, has already led to the conquest of two world titles for drivers and one world for constructors. Numbers that will almost certainly be retouched this year, given the impressive dominance that the RB19 – the latest creature from Newey’s pencil – is exercising over the rest of the competition.
Illustrious names
In his long career spent in the Circus, Newey has worked and won with some of the greatest drivers in motorsport history: from Mansell to Prost, from Hakkinen to Vettel, many of the Formula 1 world champions have benefited from its single-seaters. Verstappen certainly falls into the category of these phenomena and the 64-year-old British engineer – during a long interview given to Sky Sports F1 Italy to another of his former drivers, Ivan Capelli, he had no doubts in the celebrate the Hasselt native’s impressive qualities.
Verstappen’s qualities
To Capelli, who asked him if Verstappen could represent the prototype of the perfect pilotfor its completeness, Newey replied in the affirmative: “Yes it is. He has a crazy talent in controlling the car and some innate driving skills. When he arrived he was making more mistakes because he was young and always pushing the limits – acknowledged the direct technician of Red Bull – now, touching wood, he drives to the limit of his possibilities. It has great sensitivity with tire management and I think we’ve seen that in quite a few races over the last couple of years. He really has great sensitivity on how to use the tires and their behaviour”.
Past and present
Looking to the great legends of the past, Newey has drawn a profile of all the most famous names he has worked withhighlighting above all the differences between the characters of each one: “Every rider is different from the other Newey explained. Mansell had great self-confidence and great physical strength. Prost was more methodical, he concentrated a lot on the details. Testing with him was frustrating because he never pushed himself to the limit. So you never knew where it really was. Mika and Kimi: Finns are silent and don’t say much, but from what they say you can get a lot of information and you can interpret what they are saying because they have different views. They also have a particular characteristic: that of not making mistakes under pressure. With Vettel instead there were long days, long debriefs, he spent a lot of time analyzing everything. Max is a little more in between these two prototypes. Very different characters, but all equally phenomenal“.
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