Reb Bull Racing has secured their third consecutive Formula One Constructor Championship for 2012 in the newly introduced Texas Grand Prix and subsequently Sebastian Vettel secured his third consecutive title one race later in Interlagos, Brazil. Red Bull Racing (RBR) car, the RB8 Formula One machine in the hands of Sebastian Vettel beat Fernando Alonso is his slower F2012 by mere 3 points, while RBR as a team won 60 points over Ferrari's 400 points, thanks to its consistently well performing second driver.
RBR did not has the best start for 2012, where the RB8 lacks the exhaust-blown diffuser from its predecessor due to the rule change, thus preventing RBR from continuing its 2011 momentum. It took 4 races for Sebastian Vettel to appear as a winner. He retains this strong big-points run along the season before suddenly surged for four-consecutive win from Singapore to India to fend off the diminishing Fernando Alonso who, prior to summer break enjoyed 40 points cushion.
Such resurgence is not possible if everything stays normal unless your opposition suddenly become disable, or the driver suddenly re-discovered a driving skill, quite unlikely. One answer, the improved car. As Fernando Alonso keep saying he was fighting Adrian Newey instead of directly mentioning Vettel, as Mark Webber is usually entangled too in this titanic 2012 season.
Who is Adrian Newey? Every F1 technical geek surely know who he is. Personally, I started reading about him in 1999, when Formula 1 came to Malaysia, thanks to a genius idea by the former Prime Minister to host a grand prix in Malaysia. Adrian Newey is one of the key figure in the technical aspect for F1 car, together with his counterpart in rivalling team such as Rory Byrne, Eghbal Hamidy and Mike Gascoyne. It was by reading his biodata that prompted me to choose Aeronautical Engineering as my field of study in the UK, and the desire to be like him was what inspired me to participate in Renault F1-Altran Engineering Academy back in the good old days.
Adrian Newey graduated in Aeronautical and Astronautic Engineering from University of Southampton in 1980, in First Class Degree no less. Over there, he conducted a research on ground-effect aerodynamics which won an interest from Fittipaldi Automotive where he landed his first job.
Newey then joined March racing team in 1981, initially as a race engineer before start designing racing car, March GTP which went on to win two consecutive IMSA titles. Within the same team, he then designed the Indycar for 1984 season which proved to be successful after taking 7 victories including Indy 500 and CART title in the following year.
In 1986, Newey decided to return to the formula one arena in Europe with FORCE F1 team, a short-lived job when the team withdrew at the end of that season. Newey then re-united with March team as Chief Designer for formula one project. As March team evolved into Leyton House team, Newey was promoted to be Technical Director. The partnership was not eternally smooth-sailing, he was fired in 1990 as the team performance declined.
Then the mega years began. Adrian Newey joined Williams F1 team as Chief Designer. In 1991, the team finished second in the constructor championship, and Nigel Mansell finished second in driver championship behind the legendary Ayrton Senna. The dominance happened in 1992, where the Newey-engineered Williams-Renault FW14B utterly dominated, as Nigel Mansell won 9 races in a season, record-breaking feat for the era.
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Williams-Renault FW15C - the active F1 car |
Adrian Newey talent continues to shine in the following year, where he, together with Patrick Head engineered an active-car, with continuously electronically adjustable suspension, anti-lock braking and traction controlled FW15C. His leading driver, Alain Prost won the championship that year, ahead of nemesis Ayrton Senna. Read more after the jump.