

Adrian Newey could divert some of his time in 2015 to working on a design for Ben Ainslie to use in the 35th Americas Cup. The English engineer’s designs have won the last four Formula 1 World Championships and the he has been vocal about how he has found the technical regulations increasingly frustrating.

“If the regulations continue to become ever more restrictive we’ll eventually get the point where the car’s more or less designed by the rulebook,” Newey complained shortly after the end of the 2013 season.

“You’ll then have, effectively, GP1 cars where the differentiators are the engine and the driver. For me, it’s not Formula 1. One of the big things that differentiates Formula 1 from almost all other sports, with perhaps the exception of the Americas Cup, is that combination of man and machine, you can have a great car with an average driver and you won’t win, a great driver with an average car you won’t win. It’s about both.”

Newey who attended the Americas Cup event when they were held in Valencia, has wanted for a long time to design a challenger for the ‘Auld Mug.’ “If you take motorsport as a global umbrella of competitive man and machine as a sport, where else is there where you have significant budget for the engineering side? The answer really is only in the Americas Cup” he enthuses when asked about it.



Whilst it is almost certain that he will not make a full time switch from cars to boats it does seem likely that he will be involved at least in a consultancy role. “There’s the potential for him perhaps to get involved, cast his eye over our design team and what we’re looking at doing” Ainslie admits.

It is worth noting that Newey is employed by Red Bull who were involved with the victorious Oracle Team USA boat last year and has a significant investment in sailing. However Ainslie is keen to put together a Team GB, whilst Red Bull is very Austrian.

Another F1 engineer looking to get involved in the Americas Cup is Mike Gascoyne of the Caterham Group, who could be a perfect fit with Ainslie. He has already re-engineered a Akilara RC3 racing yacht. “The boat is a standard construction but we put a lot of work into controlling weight and quality control so we believe we have the lightest and most structurally sound version built” he told Marine Engineering magazine.

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