Red Bull, Niue: “I’m sorry I didn’t work for Ferrari during my career”

Rome, September 29, 2023 – No Red Bull He won, well in advance and with a large margin over the competition, the 2023 Formula 1 World Constructors’ Championship. This is the second successive success for the Milton Keynes team, which seems to have opened a new course, after its experience with Sebastian Vettel at the wheel from 2011 to 2014. And now At the helm of the Anglo-Austrian rocket is another phenomenon, the Max Verstappen, who at the next event of the season will most likely secure his third world title mathematically. Behind these victories is a team that has managed to build currently unbeatable single-seater cars, such as the 2022 RB18 and the current one. RB19. At the head of this team is Adrian Niueone of the most intelligent and important engineers in the history of Formula 1. He gave an interview with the official Circus portal and in the podcast “Beyond The Grid”, Niue He admitted that he was tempted several times in his career stable Ferrari He revealed the reasons that prompted him to reject the court horse Rampant.

Double no for Ferrari

Adrian Niue He replied that there had already been contact with Ferrari: “No Ferrari It brought me closer to my Indy car days, which probably doesn’t count, then in 1993 and, famously, in 2014. The 1993 offer was very tempting. I went to the team manager at the time, Jan Todd, who has just stepped into this role. I remember him talking about whether or not to hire Michael SchumacherThen the Red Bull engineer asked sarcastically: “Do you think that was a good idea, him?” At that time, Adrian Niue He had just married, having divorced his ex-wife during the period he worked between England and the United States in March. This event in his private life specifically prompted him to decline the offer of a prancing horse. Some even speculated that Ferrari He can create a second base for his team EnglandThis is the factor that would have allowed Niue to operate across the canal. In this regard, the engineer himself declared himself skeptical: “I have never asked this question and I do not believe it. Ferrari is an Italian team. “I don’t believe in the idea of ​​having a research and design center in a completely different place to the race team, although I know obviously we have a sister team, at Red Bull, that does that.”Alpha TauriIt is, in fact, divided between Faenza, in Italy, and Bicester, in the United Kingdom. The second historical moment in which Adrian Niue I was tempted to land at Maranello which is much more recent. In 2014, when the era of hybrid turbo regulations began, the Red Bull genius found himself at a crossroads, but he explained it this way: “My discussions in 2014 with… Ferrari She was Purely out of frustration. I really don’t want to leave Red Bull, But we were in a situation where Renault It has not produced a competitive turbo-hybrid engine. It can happen in the first year, well, with the new rules: we all make mistakes. But then we went to visit Carlos Ghosn (former Renault CEO, ed.) with Christian Horner And Helmut MarcoTo try to pressure him, in order to increase the budget. Ghosn responded: “Well, I have no interest in Formula 1. I’m only here for my job. I’m only there because the marketing people say I should be there. It was really frustrating for me.” But get over that moment, Adrian Niue He decided to stay in it Milton Keynes, with results today proving him right, thanks to the new technical regulation that Red Bull has already carved out an important margin with the competition. However, the designer may feel some regret for not wearing red: “Emotionally, I think, to a certain extent, yes. But also, for example, working with Fernando Alonso And Louis Hamilton It would have been great. But that never happened. “Sometimes circumstances are just circumstances, that’s how they are.”

Mercedes project differences

Back to focusing on the present, Adrian Niue He was asked about the path Mercedes has taken with the new technical regulations. Red Bull and the Brackley team worked in opposite ways, exploiting polar opposite philosophies, which rewarded the work of Milton Keynes’ engineers over that of Toto’s engineers. Wolf: “Our projects are two opposite poles. At the end of 2022 we asked ourselves whether we should research this concept.” Mercedeswhich had flashes of competitiveness in it Brazil. We were afraid we had missed something. But in the end, we decided to remain true to the path we had chosen to take by continuing to develop it without devoting time and resources to studying the Mercedes concept.” Time proves the world champions right, while the Silver Arrows find themselves fighting to be the second force in the world championship. Niue Finally, I looked back at what happened between 2021 and 2022, the year in which the new technical directives came into force. At the time, Red Bull was competing with Mercedes for the Drivers’ Championship, which Max won in the last Grand Prix Verstappenin the hotly contested Abu Dhabi race: “Ferrari He quickly abandoned the 2021 project and focused on 2022. However, since we finally had the opportunity to play for the title again, we developed the 2021 car as much as possible, sacrificing 2022 a little. Mercedes I followed a middle path in between Ferrari And we. What was important in the 2022 project was to immediately get the basis of the design right, i.e. the chassis and suspension. “If you get the aerodynamics wrong, you can correct that during the year, but if you get the other ‘basics’ wrong, you’re stuck all season.”