Adrian Martin Newey (born 26 December 1958) is a British engineer, aerodynamicist, automotive designer, and motorsport executive. Since 2026, Newey has been team principal, technical director, and co-owner of Aston Martin in Formula One; he previously was technical director of Leyton House and McLaren, chief designer of March and Williams, and chief technical officer of Red Bull Racing. Widely regarded as one of the greatest engineers in Formula One history, Newey's designs have won 14 Drivers' and 12 Constructors' titles and 223 Grands Prix between 1991 and 2024.
After designing championship-winning Formula One cars for Williams and McLaren, Newey moved to Red Bull in 2006, his cars winning the Formula One Drivers' and Constructors' titles consecutively from 2010 to 2013, the Drivers' Championship in 2021, and both titles in 2022 and 2023. The Newey-designed RB19 is the most successful Formula One car in history, winning 21 out of the 22 races (95.45%) in which it competed. Newey's designs also won the 1985 and 1986 CART titles. On 1 May 2024, Red Bull Racing announced that Newey would leave his day-to-day Formula One design duties immediately and shift his focus to the RB17 hypercar. Newey departed the company in the first quarter of 2025 and commenced work at Aston Martin, though he is still involved in the RB17 hypercar project, including its updated final design.
Adrian Martin Newey was born in Colchester, Essex, England, on 26 December 1958, the son of Richard and Edwina Newey. His father was a veterinarian and his mother was an ambulance driver during World War II. He attended Repton public school alongside motoring journalist and writer Jeremy Clarkson. Repton expelled Newey at age 16 after at a Greenslade concert at Repton's 19th-century Pears School Building organised by the school's sixth formers, Newey pushed up the sound levels on the band's mixer, which cracked the building's stained glass windows.
Newey gained a first class honours degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Southampton in 1980. Immediately after graduation, Newey began working in motorsport for the Fittipaldi Formula One team under Harvey Postlethwaite. In 1981, he joined the March team. After a period as a race engineer for Johnny Cecotto in European Formula 2, Newey began designing racing cars. His first projects were the March 82G and 83G sports cars to compete in the IMSA GT Championship. The latter was highly successful and won the IMSA's title in 1983 and 1984.
In 1984, Newey moved to the March Indy car project, working as designer and race engineer for Bobby Rahal at Truesports. Newey formed a close friendship with Rahal, which would impact their careers some fifteen years later. Newey's March 85C design won the 1985 CART championship in the hands of Al Unser, and the 1985 Indianapolis 500 with Danny Sullivan. In 1986, Newey moved to Kraco to engineer Michael Andretti's car, while his March 86C design won the 1986 CART championship and 1986 Indianapolis 500 with Bobby Rahal. At the end of 1986, Newey joined the Haas Lola Formula One team in an effort to improve its fortunes, but the team withdrew at the conclusion of the 1986 season. After a spell at Newman-Haas in 1987 working as Mario Andretti's race engineer, Newey was re-hired by March, this time to work in Formula One as chief designer.
March/Leyton House (1988–1990)
Newey's first Formula One design, the 1988 March 881, was far more competitive than many expected, with Ivan Capelli finishing second in Portugal, and even passing Alain Prost's McLaren-Honda turbo for the lead of the 1988 Japanese Grand Prix briefly on lap 16. As March became Leyton House Racing in 1990, Newey gained promotion to the role of technical director. At the 1990 French Grand Prix, Capelli led the most part of the race and finished second after a late pass by Prost's Ferrari, but that proved to be the year's bright spot, with the team's results declining. In the summer of 1990, Newey was fired, although he soon found another role. Newey later said: "I was fired but I'd already made up my mind I was going – because once a team gets run by an accountant, it's time to move. Your self-confidence does suffer but Williams had approached me."
Through the 1980s and into the 1990s, Williams was a top running team, and technical director Patrick Head wasted no time in getting a contract signed. With a vastly superior budget, drivers, and resources at his disposal, Newey and Head rapidly became the dominant design partnership of the early 1990s. By mid-season 1991, Newey's FW14 chassis was every bit a match for the previously dominant McLaren, but early season reliability issues and the efforts of Ayrton Senna prevented Williams team leader Nigel Mansell from taking the title. In 1992, there would be no problems, and with dominance of the sport not repeated until the 2000s Ferrari years of Michael Schumacher, Mansell took the Drivers' title and Newey secured his first Constructors' title. 1993 delivered a second, this time with Alain Prost at the wheel of the FW15C.
1994 saw a rare dip in performance for Newey-designed cars and the team and drivers struggled to match Schumacher and the Rory Byrne-designed Benetton B194 for pace and reliability. Disaster struck at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix with the death of Senna who had joined Williams that year. A late-season charge, helped by a two-race ban for Schumacher, enabled Williams to claim their third straight Constructors' title; however, Williams were unable to take a third consecutive Drivers' title, and with possible manslaughter charges for Senna's accident in prospect, cracks began to show in Newey's relationship with Williams team management.
By 1995, it was clear that Newey was once more ready to become technical director of a team. With Head a share-holding founder of Williams, he found his way blocked. Loss of both Drivers' and Constructors' titles to Benetton in 1995 saw further distance put between Newey and Williams, and by the time Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve secured both titles in 1996, Newey had been placed on gardening leave prior to joining McLaren. His career at Williams ended with his cars winning 59 race victories, 78 pole positions, and 60 fastest laps all from 114 races from 1991 until 1997. These seven years saw four drivers clinch World Championship titles.
Unable to influence the design of the 1997 McLaren (the MP4/12), Newey was forced to attempt to improve on the Neil Oatley design while concentrating his efforts on the 1998 car. A win at the 1997 European Grand Prix saw McLaren enter the off-season on a high, and when the racing resumed four months later the McLaren MP4/13 was the car to beat. Titles followed in 1998 and 1999 (with the McLaren MP4/14), and Mika Häkkinen narrowly missed out on a third Drivers' title in 2000.
In the spring of 2001, Newey signed a contract with the Jaguar F1 team managed by Newey's friend and former CART colleague Bobby Rahal. Despite having a signed contract, Rahal was unable to complete the deal when McLaren boss Ron Dennis persuaded Newey to stay. Newey and Rahal later stated that the deal failed due to Rahal's position within Jaguar being undermined by Niki Lauda and internal politics at Ford. Rahal was fired from the team several months later.
Despite remaining with McLaren, rumours persisted that Newey wanted to leave the team. By late 2004, his future began to look uncertain when speculation began that Newey could return to Williams or even leave the sport completely. Despite strenuous denials from Dennis, stories continued to circulate during the 2004–2005 off-season that Newey's departure was imminent. In April 2005, it was confirmed that his contract with the team had been extended by six months to the end of the year at which point he was expected to take a sabbatical or retire from Formula One design completely. On 19 July, he stated that "this step can wait" and he would remain with McLaren for the year 2006.
Despite those assurances, Red Bull Racing announced on 8 November 2005 that Newey would join the team from February 2006. He was reported to getting around $10 million a year at Red Bull after McLaren baulked at increasing his salary in contract renewal negotiations. Newey could hardly influence the design of the 2006 car (the RB2) and Red Bull's season started with poor results, having scored only two points from six races; however, the team's lead driver, David Coulthard, who had driven Newey-designed cars for years for both Williams and McLaren, managed to secure third place and six points in the Monaco Grand Prix. Although assisted by retirements of other competitors, indications were that the team was eventually beginning to pick up where it left off in 2005 when they finished a close seventh overall.