Former chief designer of Red Bull team hits out at engine supplier Renault, saying: ‘There is no obvious light at the end of the tunnel’

Adrian Newey, the creative genius behind Red Bull’s four double world championships, has revealed how frustrated he became with the Renault engine before he decided to become less involved with the Formula One team. “It’s very frustrating that we’ve been pushed into a position where we’ve got an engine which is quite a long way behind, with all sorts of failings, and with no obvious light at the end of the tunnel,” he says.

“You can say: ‘OK, Mercedes have done such a good job, Ferrari are now doing a better job and Renault haven’t got it together.’ But at the same time I think the FIA needs to be a bit more active rather than being completely passive and saying: ‘Well, that’s not our problem.’ They can’t just give up – there has to be some governance.”

The 56-year-old had his words vindicated on the first occasion the Red Bulls ran in anger in Saturday afternoon’s qualifying: Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat were seventh and 13th respectively.

The word genius is not used flippantly in the case of Newey, the finest F1 designer of his time. He has produced 10 cars that have won the constructors’ world championship, five at Williams, four at Red Bull and one at McLaren, who, at this particular moment, must regret his departure more keenly than anyone. That is why his withdrawal from the F1 frontline is a source of great regret, though his opponents are likely to get over it quickly enough.

Newey referred to the fundamental uncompetitive nature of the current engine when he said: “It’s one thing being in the position where you’re not competitive but you can see your way out of it. It’s another thing when you’re not competitive and your partner doesn’t seem to be willing to engage.

“I honestly don’t know the reason for it. It seems to be: ‘Yes, we hear you say’, talk. In pre-season testing, we had 12 days and a filming day in which I think we had six major failures. So our mileage was very restrictive through engine problems and as measured by the torque sensor through those tests, the power we have is exactly the same as last year.”

Newey is also unhappy about the way the engine has become more important in the modern Formula One car. “There’s three main performance differentiators if you like, the driver, the chassis and the engine, and with the current regulations, the engine is disproportionately important, whilst the chassis regulations have become very, very restrictive,” he says.

“The car is not designed for you but there is very little room for manoeuvre. The cars are a combination of fairly prescriptive regulations that have become more prescriptive every year for six seasons.

“The cars are converging. You’ve only got to look at the cars out there. Apart from the small differences in the nose shape if you painted all the cars white, you’d need to be a reasonably good observer to know which one was which.”

It is Newey’s hatred of politics that is another reason for his disenchantment with F1. Politics drove him out of McLaren and may have had a bearing on his decision not to join Ferrari, the most political of all teams, who last year were prepared to offer him a fortune, even by F1 standards, to move to Italy. Newey is still overseeing the design of the Red Bull, but is now devoting his time to other projects, such as helping design a boat for Ben Ainslie’s America’s Cup challenge.

“I felt ready to get involved in other areas, really,” he says. “So far it’s mainly been at the simulation level. We’re now getting to a point with the aerodynamics and layout and hydrodynamics of the boat as well, so I have started to get involved with that as well.”

Newey’s move is a strange one, but not for the former Mercedes technical director Bob Bell, who says: “Adrian’s got an inescapable attention to detail. And he will invest a huge amount of effort into detail.

“On top of that he’s original. He sees the bigger picture, the complete car, so it has his hallmark over the whole thing. It’s not a collection of diverse solutions that have been brought together by different people.”

It still seems a strange move, though, for a man who has never shown any particular interest in boats. Newey says he has also started working on a road car. “It is the early stages but we are up and running.

“We’re talking to various people in terms of partnerships but at the moment we’re doing it off our own back and are looking for a partner. We are keen to get something going.”

Newey said that he had already got drawings down on paper. But would the new car be powered by Renault? “I can’t talk about perspective partners,” he said diplomatically.