29/09/2023
NEWS STORY
Design legend Adrian Newey admits to regretting the fact that he never got to work with Ferrari or drivers such as Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton.
If ever there was an inhabitant of Planet Paddock that you'd imagine would have no cause to echo Edith Piaf's cry of Non, je ne regrette rien, it would be Adrian Newey. After all, the Briton has designed world championship winning cars for Williams, McLaren and Red Bull not to mention Indy 500 winners and CART champions.
However, talking to the Beyond the Grid podcast, the 64-year-old admits to a number of regrets.
Like many, be it designers, engineers, team bosses and drivers, Newey admits that Maranello outfit held a fascination for him.
Asked if he regrets never working with Ferrari, he relies: "Emotionally, I guess, to a point, yes...
"But just as, for instance, working with Fernando and Lewis would have been fabulous. But it never happened. It's just circumstance sometimes, that's the way it is."
In fact, Newey was first approached just ahead of the golden era of the early 2000s, while in 2014 there was another bid by Ferrari to secure his services.
"Once in my IndyCar days, which probably doesn't count," he reveals, "then '93 and famously in 2014.
"The '93 one was very tempting," he admits. "I went down, Jean Todt had just started. I remember him talking about should he hire Michael (Schumacher) or not, and asking me 'do you think that was a good idea?'
"The main reason I didn't is my first marriage failed, for various reasons, but probably predominantly because I went off to IndyCar, I was living in the States during the season. My relatively newly-wed life came out with me to start with, really didn't like living in America and went back. That put a strain on our marriage we never really recovered from, to be honest.
"In '93, I was one year into my second marriage and didn't want to make that same mistake again."
Of course, when John Barnard was approached by Ferrari in the late '80s, he insisted on setting up his design HQ in Surrey, England.
"I never asked the question and I don't believe it," says Newey when asked if he had considered a similar move. "If you're going to do it, Ferrari is an Italian team. The idea of having a research and design centre which is in a completely different place to the race team - I know we have a sister team (AlphaTauri) that does that - but I don't believe in the concept.
"My discussions in 2014 with Ferrari were purely out of frustration," he admits. "I really didn't want to leave but we were in this position where Renault hadn't produced a competitive turbo hybrid engine.
"That happens in the first year, OK, new rules. We all make mistakes. "But we went to see (then Renault CEO) Carlos Ghosn, Christian, Helmut and myself to try to put pressure on him to up the budget, his reply was: 'Well, I have no interest in Formula 1. I'm only in it because my marketing people say I should be'. That was such a depressing place to be."