Newey already focusing on Red Bull’s 2021 F1 car

Red Bull chief designer Adrian Newey is already focusing his efforts on the team’s 2021 Formula 1 car with team principal Christian Horner outlining a bigger transition period over the first third of this season.

Just a week on from launching the Red Bull’s 2020 F1 car, the RB16, design attention is moving to next season with the regulations shake-up providing the biggest opportunity to teams in almost a decade.

Legendary F1 designer Newey, who has been refreshed by the new regulations according to Horner, has been given an early start on Red Bull’s 2021 efforts with the team splitting focus between the RB16 and RB17.

With the 2020 F1 car an evolution on its predecessor due to stable regulations for this season, team boss Horner feels Red Bull must grab an early opportunity to gain a head start on its rivals for the rules overhaul being introduced next year.

“Of course it’s the balancing act this year and we are pushing as hard as we can on RB16 but RB17 is a very different car to new regulations. A lot of Adrian’s focus is already on RB17 but we’ve got a certain amount of resource and it’s how you carve that up in performance,” Horner said.

“You have to spin a few plates this year. You’ve got a finite amount of resource and it’s how you use that effectively and efficiently. We’ve got enough focus on both campaigns at the moment but of course there will be a transition over after the first third of the year.”

Newey was present for the majority of the opening 2020 F1 pre-season test at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, with Red Bull duo Max Verstappen and Alexander Albon notching up a combined total of 471 laps with the RB16 over the three days of track action.

“It’s been a very successful test for the whole Team and in my opinion one of the most satisfying first weeks of pre-season testing we’ve had in some time,” Red Bull’s head of race engineering, Guillaume Rocquelin, said. “We had no issues, and the car ran very smoothly throughout.

“We’re in good shape and we’ve now got a very good platform heading into the second week where we’ll hopefully add some more performance.”

Newey has created F1 world championship-winning cars for three different teams across his career, starting at Williams before further success at McLaren and Red Bull. Newey’s designs were credited as the major reason behind Red Bull’s domination to four consecutive F1 world drivers’ and constructors’ titles between 2010 and 2013.

The F1 designer has also effectively completed the final stages of the design and development for the Aston Martin Valkyrie which is expected to go into production this year as part of the collaboration between Red Bull Technologies and the British car manufacturer.