When present at the race track, Adrian Newey can often be observed prowling the grid pre-race, taking a close look at rival cars.
In an appearance on the James Allen on F1 podcast, Newey explained how he prefers to scan the 3D cars for areas of interest, rather than spend time flicking through a mountain of “spy photographer” photos, which will probably not show him what he wants anyway.
Adrian Newey prefers 3D cars over 2D car images
Newey has established himself as one of the greatest, most respected Formula 1 car designers of all time, having contributed to a total of 26 world championship wins.
He departed Red Bull in 2024, but that was not the end of his Formula 1 story. He would sign with Aston Martin, slotting into the newly-created ‘managing technical partner’ role, and also became a shareholder in the team.
Newey started work at Aston Martin in March, and has been focused on the new chassis and engine regulations coming for F1 2026. He has been on the ground at select races in 2025, and at the Monaco and British GPs, was seen analysing the McLaren MCL39.
PlanetF1.com reporter Thomas Maher captured images of Newey eyeing the McLaren on both occasions, which was the dominant car at the time. Newey is often seen taking a look over rival cars on the pre-race grid, and has now opened up on his reasons.
Explaining that it is two-part, Newey finds that images of cars taken by “spy photographers” often miss the jackpot, and take too much time to translate into initiatives, compared to looking at a physical rival car right in front of him.
“I think all teams have effectively, spy photographers,” he said.
“Generally speaking, the other teams know who those spy photographers are, and run around trying to cover things up.
“In digital photography, you end up with God knows how many thousands of pictures each race weekend. You then try to use whatever software to categorise them, etc. But nevertheless, you’ve got this huge amount of photographs, which you could easily spend the next week looking through, if you weren’t careful.
“So, I look at cars on the grid for two reasons. First of all, because the photographs you then get, are clearly in 2D, and quite often they’re not quite the angle you’re interested in.
“Secondly, it’s just time efficient, to be perfectly honest. I’ve hopefully got enough of an eye that I can spot something of interest, but by looking at it in 3D… I would spend ages trying to find that in a 2D series of 2000 photos, or whatever it might be.”
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By joining Aston Martin, Newey gave himself the opportunity to tick a driver off his bucket list of dream racers who he wanted to work with. That is Fernando Alonso.
Almost two decades on from winning his second and most recent Drivers’ Championship, Aston Martin is Alonso’s final shot at winning a third title.
With Newey on his side, the chances of such success instantly go up, and as part of an in-house interview, Alonso was asked to spill the beans on what it has been like to work with Newey.
“Yeah, he’s an incredible person, the best designer in the history of our sport, and everyone in the team is learning a lot from him,” said Alonso.
“Everything Adrian does, you try to understand why he is doing that, why he chose that direction, or why he’s answering in that way, because there is always something to learn from him. Even from a simple answer that he can give to you in response to a question, that simple answer can be so clear to him, but why is it not for others?
“There are moments when, to be able to understand him, you need to use all your brain capacity. Even if Adrian only uses five per cent, for us, for normal people, we need to use much more. [Laughs.]”
In addition to successfully gaining Newey’s services, Aston Martin also struck a Honda works engine deal from F1 2026. Honda powered Max Verstappen to his four Drivers’ titles between 2021-24, and Red Bull to their 2022 and 2023 Constructors’ crowns.
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