Former Red Bull F1 driver reveals radical Adrian Newey idea

Former F1 driver Robert Doornbos has revealed an extreme experiment Adrian Newey tried at Red Bull, where the Dutchman was the test driver at the time.

The 43-year-old joined the Milton Keynes squad in 2006, having spent time as Jordan test driver before racing for Minardi over the second-half of the previous campaign, it's last in F1 before becoming Toro Rosso. 

Whilst he would eventually compete in three grands prix for Red Bull, the bulk of his contribution to the team was away from race weekends, where he racked up an impressive 36,000 kilometres behind the wheel, according to the driver himself, across that year and the next.

However, there was one test session that stood out in particular to Doornbos, when the now-Aston Martin technical managing partner dabbled with an unorthodox approaching to driving.

“As a test driver, you feel like a test dummy," Doornbos explained on The Pit Talk Podcast as the pretext to his remarkable tale. 

“And you have to test everything; the life of wings, the flexibility, if they will just destroy at the end of the straight because there's too much load on them... and you end up in the wall.

“It's like, 'okay, Robert, thank you. We're not going to use this wing up, on to the next.' That's what you do as a test driver. Testing was unlimited back in the day - I did 36,000 kilometres... I almost felt like a crash test dummy.

“But I also did tyre testing. Long days on the track, just mileage, mileage, mileage. So when I got prepared, my neck only was getting bigger, bigger, bigger. I was physically the best-prepared driver to jump into a race heat because I did so many miles.

“There was a day that Adrian said, 'what do you think of driving with your feet above each other?'

“You know, so to get the aerodynamics more... Can you imagine? I mean, that's just not doable, but it shows the way he thinks outside of the box, within the rules, but you have to think outside of the box..."

He also shared an exchange he had with the fabled British aerodynamicist, claiming Newey would swap drivers for computers, if given the chance.

“Well, we tested it, and I came back into the pit lane, and he just wrote something on his on his notebook," Doornbos added.

“And I was like, 'what are you writing down there?' He said: 'Well, I'm going to change something in the car.' I said: 'What is it?'

“'It's between the engine and the steering wheel' [Newey replied]. I said: 'That's me!'

“So it just shows that he's so intelligent. He if he could exchange the driver for a computer, he would also enjoy that.”