Robert Doornbos is among those to have given Newey the ultimate praise as well, claiming that he is the ‘Einstein of F1’ when recalling a time when he questioned the possibility of stacking pedals. He continued: “Adrian is like the Einstein of F1. I really understood his brain during a test day when we were trying something new on the car.
“At one stage, he asked me if I thought it would be possible to drive an F1 car with two feet on top of each other, with the brake on the bottom and the throttle on top of the brake, so the car could be sleeker and slicker on the front end.” I was like, ‘Physically that’s not possible.’ He looked at me and wrote something down. He said, ‘I want to change something.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘It’s between the steering wheel and the engine.’ I said, ‘That’s me!’
“Basically, if you give him a free hand, he wants to have a robot inside the car or something, so the balance of the human factor and him thinking only in numbers and data is quite extraordinary to work with. He pushes the boundaries.”
