How To Build A Car: The Autobiography Of The World’s Greatest Formula 1 Designer


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COPYRIGHT HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017 FIRST EDITION Text and illustrations © Adrian Newey 2017 Cover layout design © HarpercollinsPublishers 2017 Cover illustrations © Adrian Newey 2017 A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library Adrian Newey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green Source ISBN: 9780008196806 Ebook Edition © October 2017 ISBN: 9780008196813 Version 2017-10-26 CONTENTS COVER TITLE PAGE COPYRIGHT PROLOGUE ON THE GRID CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 Turn One HOW TO BUILD A MARCH 83G CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 Turn Two HOW TO BUILD A MARCH 86C CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER 15 CHAPTER 16 CHAPTER 17 CHAPTER 18 CHAPTER 19 CHAPTER 20 CHAPTER 21 Turn Three HOW TO BUILD AN 881 CHAPTER 22 CHAPTER 23 CHAPTER 24 CHAPTER 25 CHAPTER 26 CHAPTER 27 CHAPTER 28 CHAPTER 29 CHAPTER 30 Turn Four HOW TO BUILD AN FW14 CHAPTER 31 CHAPTER 32 CHAPTER 33 CHAPTER 34 CHAPTER 35 CHAPTER 36 CHAPTER 37 Turn Five HOW TO BUILD AN FW16 CHAPTER 38 CHAPTER 39 CHAPTER 40 CHAPTER 41 CHAPTER 42 CHAPTER 43 CHAPTER 44 CHAPTER 45 CHAPTER 46 CHAPTER 47 CHAPTER 48 Turn Six HOW TO BUILD AN FW18 CHAPTER 49 CHAPTER 50 CHAPTER 51 Turn Seven HOW TO BUILD AN MP4 13 CHAPTER 52 CHAPTER 53 CHAPTER 54 CHAPTER 55 CHAPTER 56 CHAPTER 57 CHAPTER 58 Turn Eight HOW TO BUILD AN MP4 20 CHAPTER 59 CHAPTER 60 CHAPTER 61 Turn Nine HOW TO BUILD AN RB5 CHAPTER 62 CHAPTER 63 CHAPTER 64 CHAPTER 65 CHAPTER 66 CHAPTER 67 CHAPTER 68 Turn Ten HOW TO BUILD AN RB6 CHAPTER 69 CHAPTER 70 CHAPTER 71 Turn Eleven HOW TO BUILD AN RB8 CHAPTER 72 CHAPTER 73 CHAPTER 74 CHAPTER 75 CHAPTER 76 CHAPTER 77 EPILOGUE GLOSSARY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS LIST OF SEARCHABLE TERMS ABOUT THE PUBLISHER PROLOGUE Clouds were gathering that day. Rain was forecast. Feeling scrutinised, I lowered myself creakily into the cockpit of the FW15, painfully aware that at 35, after 10 years in the business, and with two constructors’ championships under my belt, I was about to take my first proper spin in a Formula One car – in fact, my first real drive on a race track, period. It was 1993, and I was chief designer at Williams. Frank Williams, owner of the team, had been talked into letting a journalist take one of our cars for a spin. What you might call a promotional drive. With that idea gaining traction, co-founder and technical director, Patrick Head, thought that the senior engineers, him, me and Bernard Dudot, who was in charge of Renault engine development, should also have a go. And so here I was, sitting in the car at the Paul Ricard circuit in the South of France, absorbing from a driver’s angle all the things I’d paid so little attention to as an engineer: the procedure for the ignition sequence; the whine and howl of the engine – a feeling of being cocooned but alone in the cockpit, as though the sheer volume and bone-shaking drama of it is physically holding you in place. Nerves suddenly give a feeling of intense