Newey: Statistically, RB18 has been our best car

Adrian Newey, Red Bull’s Chief Technical Officer, claimed his 2022 Formula 1 creation, the RB18, is the team’s best car statistically.

The Red Bull RB18 reminded everyone of its predecessors from the 2010-2013 era when Red Bull, with Sebastian Vettel, were on a dominant winning streak, as Max Verstappen steered it to a record 15 wins in 2022, while Sergio Perez added two more victories to that tally.

The genius behind the RB18, Adrian Newey, is definitely proud of his creation, and was quoted by F1’s official website saying: “Statistically, obviously, [the] RB18 has been our best car.

“It’s a car I think we can be very proud of in as much as we had a tight championship battle through 2021, and arguably we put too much resource into that, so you’re not putting it into this brand-new car with the new regulations we knew were coming,” he explained.

In 2021, Red Bull kept on developing their RB16B, as the Title fight between Verstappen and Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton went down to the wire, the Dutchman winning at a controversial season finale in Abu Dhabi.

The balancing act between 2021 and 2022

That meant development of the RB18 in parallel with the RB16B was a delicate affair, as the team worked to secure Verstappen maiden F1 Title while trying to make sure they do not fall behind with their 2022 challenger.

As it turned out, the RB18 needed some catching up to do with Ferrari’s F1-75, an impressive Red single seater that was two years in the making, but the Milton Keynes squad did not waste any time sorting the Blue car out.

Newey reflected: “It’s a difficult balancing act. We focused on trying to get the fundamentals right, including front and rear suspension, the layers and the radiators.

“We kind of struggled a little bit with the bounce [effect] in pre-season testing. We’d already done a little bit of research and knew roughly what we needed to do to improve it,” he said referring to “porpoising”, a phenomenon inherent with ground effect cars.

“When we put the race package on in Bahrain, that catapulted us from [being] definitely behind Ferrari to broadly level,” the British engineer revealed.

“After that, it was a matter of developing it and, certainly, [during] the second half [of the season], we had a fully competitive package,” Newey concluded.

Red Bull secured the F1 Drivers’ Crown with Max Verstappen at the 2022 Japanese Grand Prix, their fifth Constructors’ Title clinched on the following race, the 2022 United States Grand Prix in Austin.