With Sebastian Vettel standing on the brink of a second Formula One drivers’ title, Adrian Newey, Red Bull Racing’s chief technical officer, put his 24-year-old champion's phenomenal run of form down to intelligence as much as talent.
“He’s is a very bright young lad who thinks a lot about what he does. He takes a lot of time to try and understand the car, understand his own performance. Like most good drivers he has a good feeling for the car. He has a very good feeling for the tyres. I think Sebastian is very gifted naturally but he works hard at it and that is always the hallmark of a great driver.”
'Sebastian can be one of the greats - it's up to us to deliver the car that allows him to do it'
With the attention of technical departments now firmly focused on 2012, Newey is faced with the balancing act of deciding how much of this year’s dominant design to replace. He says the default position of the Red Bull team is to resist doing anything new merely for the sake of it, while conceding a certain amount of development is absolutely demanded.
“I think fundamentally there’s no point in doing something new if it’s not better [but] our approach is certainly not complacency, so we’re not thinking: ‘we don’t have to do anything, we’ll still be quick enough next year.’ That would be enormous folly. We’re working away trying to deal with the regulation changes. The restriction on the exhaust exit position is actually a very big change; it goes through the car. Other than that, the regulation changes are significant but not huge. So, in that sense, the car will be an evolution, it will bear a family resemblance to the RB5, RB6, RB7 lineage.
“It’s just a matter of pushing on, as always. The fact is that you don’t know how much performance your competitors are going to find over the winter, so it’s get your heads down and get on with it, and you find out where you are come the first race.”
Newey refused to compare Sebastian Vettel with the other champions he has worked alongside, but he did concede the young German is capable of joining the greats. “I think undoubtedly, yes, there’s no doubt Sebastian can do it. It’s up to us to try to deliver the car that allows him to do it."
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