How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World's Greatest Formula 1 Designer

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And while his career has been marked by unbelievable triumphs, there have also been deep tragedies; most notably Ayrton Sennas death during his time at Williams in 1994.

The book covers three areas: Newey's life outside F1, the world of F1 in the last 25 years or so, and Newey's contributions as designer and race engineer. There is a lot of technical terminology used but most important concepts are explained within each discussion and there is a handy glossary at the back if anything needs further explanation. Adrian has designed for the likes of Mario Andretti, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Damon Hill, David Coulthard, Mika Hakkinen, Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel, always with a shark-like purity of purpose: to make the car go faster. It was interesting to hear Priestley's thoughts on Lewis's first year - how they liked, then dislliked, his attitude. He’s also terrific in giving insight into the drivers he’s worked with: from Mario Andretti to Sebastian Vettel, taking in Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Alain Prost and others along the way.I'm curious about his statement that Mario Andretti believes that Colin Chapman faked his death and went into hiding in Brazil. As the lead designer of the FW16, and as one of the leading men in the garage in Imola, Newey is better placed than anyone to help to answer the many unanswered questions surrounding the death of Ayrton Senna at Imola in 1994. As a child, the labels on Tamiya model car kits helped him to understand what parts of the car were. The illustrations are well considered but too small, especially given the amount of white space in the book. Newey is more informative about aerodynamic tweaks than most articles I've read about barge boards, wing end plates and sculpted wishbones.

A fantastic book and insight, showing that Newey is nothing like the shy person I once thought he was from his interviews. The factual content doesn't sound too brilliant either, much of it being descriptions of bad post race behaviour, mostly involving excessive alcohol consumption. The attitude of 'we're the real heroes , the driver is just a prima donna' has a counterpart in many other contexts - I am sure Nick is absolutely right about conductors and I have seen it with engineers and labourers , aircraft technicians and pilots and barristers and their clerks . But one striking aspect of his autobiography is how two of F1’s other great teams, had and blew their chances to hold onto F1’s star designer. This fascinating memoir explores his career, his cars and his colleagues, from his days spent sketching car designs as an adolescent and his time in Indy Car to - of course - Formula One.

Granted, you may need a certain all-encompassing fascination of every aspect of F1 including the nuts and bolts to be riveted by it all (which I was), but How To Build A Car is so much more than just what its title implies. I wasn't surprised at the developments in his personal life nor the limited amount of space in the book he allocated to describing them.