What Newey expected when he first joined Red Bull

Who’d have thought – just a year ago, when they were still suffering a ‘Jag Rac’ hangover – that early in 2007 Red Bull Racing would be fighting against the notion that they’re going to do rather well this season? For all that the creation of a modern F1 car is a team process, there are still those who believe that one person can make a difference.

Has the hiring of Adrian Newey made such a difference at Red Bull? Perhaps – but perhaps not. It was Newey himself, at the Autosport International show in January (before the RB3 – the car that clearly bears his authorial stamp – had even turned a wheel) who was the first, in public, to play down those high expectations.

“The truth is I can’t remember what I said,” muses Newey. “Certainly I never feel comfortable with hype; there was a lot of it when the [McLaren] MP4-18A was released, that it was the car that was going to beat Ferrari – when, in truth, it was one of the worst cars I’ve been in charge of [the 18A was tested extensively in 2003 but never raced, but then the 2004 MP4-19 was essentially the 18A, rebadged]. So I’d rather be in a position of exceeding expectations – because if you don’t, you get rubbished. That’s the nature of the sport.

“But also, from a pragmatic point of view, Red Bull are a young team and that was part of the attraction of joining them. You could say they’re an old team, just Jaguar rebadged, but that really isn’t the case. On the engineering side I’d say that over 50% of the staff are post-Jaguar. The workforce are tremendously talented in all areas but we haven’t really had long to get to know each other. And, equally, we don’t yet have the resources of an established team.”

It’s interesting, some might say extraordinary, to hear that – because there’s an understandable perception that the Red Bull organisation are mouth-wateringly wealthy (as I put this to Newey, team principal Christian Horner, who has just sauntered in to pick up a laptop, exclaims “Uh oh!” and departs at speed). Yet there’s obviously a crucial difference between simply having money and having the infrastructure that ensures it’s spent productively.

PLUS: How big a blow is Newey’s exit to Red Bull?

“Yes, there is,” says Newey. “Red Bull have a healthy budget, but this myth that’s being put about by some of the other team owners that we’re big spenders – the Chelsea of F1 – is total tripe. I…