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Who is the most important man in Formula 1?
It’s not Max Verstappen or Lewis Hamilton. At least not according to Haas team principal Guenther Steiner.
It’s also not Red Bull boss Christian Horner or Mercedes boss Toto Wolff.
No, instead, Steiner says that the one man he’d choose over anybody else to join his team is Red Bull Racing’s chief technology officer Adrian Newey.
“I will take Adrian Newey because I’m sure he can make a car which can win,” Steiner said in a mailbag answer for The Athletic. The answer is quite obvious. Even if you take Max (Verstappen) with our car, we wouldn’t win. I think if we had a Red Bull, Nico could win races and Kevin.”
Newey, who celebrated his 65th birthday on Tuesday, is considered a genius in the motorsports world.
He’s been the architect behind championship-winning cars across four decades. Newey won his first championship in 1992 with the Williams FW15C. He then designed the championship-winning McLaren MP4/13 in 1998 and 1999.
Newey again rose to the top of the sport with Red Bull Racing in 2010 with the RB6. Red Bull went on to win four consecutive constructors championships.
Then, nearly a decade later with the same team, he designed Max Verstappen’s championship-winning RB16B in 2021. Red Bull continued its winning ways in 2022 and then dominated the 2023 season like no team before, winning 21 of 22 grands prix contested.
Interesting enough, Steiner preceded Newey as the technical director at Red Bull. He left the team in 2008, a move he puts down to a disagreement between the two sides.
“I fell out with them. (Laughs.) We didn’t fall out. We disagreed on how to go forward,” Steiner said of the split. I had a plan, and they disagreed so we parted company. Simple as this.”
Which only goes to show just how much he respects Newey, who may well be the sports greatest-ever mind.