Adrian Newey Returns to Championship Winning Car as Genius Designer Rivals Zak Brown at the Monaco Historique

Remember when Zak Brown challenged Toto Wolff to a fight in the boxing ring during the Las Vegas GP? Well, that isn’t their forte, but F1 surely is. So the newly unleashed Adrian Newey will be competing against Zak Brown at the Monaco Historique Grand Prix. To make things even, both of them are driving championship-winning cars, albeit from different eras. Let’s see what this is all about. 

In Marvel’s Iron Man 2 movie, Tony Stark and Pepper fly out to Monaco to attend a race, and the race in the movie is the Monaco Historique. Stark decided to sack his team’s driver and drive the car himself. Now that Adrian Newey is free from Red Bull and has announced his exit, we can very well imagine the mastermind just letting himself loose and deciding to take some historic F1 cars for a spin. Like Robert Downey Jr said, “Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist”, well maybe a millionaire and not a playboy, but you get the point. 

Adrian Newey was seen driving the Lotus 49 B around the circuit of Monaco. This Lotus was designed by the legendary Colin Chapman with the help of Maurice Philippe. It was one of the first cars to feature the engine as a stressed member of the chassis, an engineering feat in many people’s opinion, and went on to win the 1968 and 1970 Driver’s and Constructors championships. A very well-suited car for someone of Newey’s stature.

On the other hand, Zak Brown will also be spotted this weekend driving a historic Williams around the track. The McLaren CEO will be driving Alan Jones’ Championship winning FW07B from the 1980 F1 season. Newey’s car is about a decade older compared to Brown’s and is even down on Horsepower figures. 

Nonetheless, it’ll be interesting to see how these senior figures from the world of F1 do once they step into the driver’s shoes. The Monaco Historique event isn’t really about racing and is about celebrating the motorsport history and remembering the legends and their cars. Goodwood Festival of Speed is a similar event that celebrates new and old cars, and surprisingly, Adrian Newey’s masterpiece will be revealed at the 2024 Festival. 

Adrian Newey and Co. to reveal the Red Bull RB17 at the 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed

The Red Bull HyperCar RB17 has been in development since late 2020 when Adrian Newey came up with the idea and started drawing the car on paper. The car is believed to cost somewhere around the $6.25 million mark. In Red Bull’s Talking Bull podcast, Adrian Newey revealed all the key specifications of the car and what customer’s buying experience will be like, yet there isn’t a single picture on the internet of what the car looks like.

But Red Bull has now announced that they will reveal the RB17 for the first time at the 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed, on Friday, the 12th of July in the Cathedral Paddock. Speaking about this launch, Christian Horner said, “We are excited to debut the RB17 to the public for the first time and couldn’t think of a better world stage than the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The RB17 exudes rarity and engineering excellence. We’ve channeled everything we know about racing into making the ultimate performance car and can’t wait for the public to see the result.”

Adrian Newey revealed that he’s going to buy 1 of the 50 RB17s, so we might see the mastermind switch the Lotus for his self-designed car in the upcoming years.