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    How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Formula 1 Designer
    How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Formula 1 Designer
    How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Formula 1 Designer
    Audiobook12 hours

    How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Formula 1 Designer

    Written by Adrian Newey

    Narrated by Richard Trinder

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    'Adrian has a unique gift for understanding drivers and racing cars. He is ultra competitive but never forgets to have fun. An immensely likeable man.' Damon Hill

    The world’s foremost designer in Formula One, Adrian Newey OBE is arguably one of Britain’s greatest engineers and this is his fascinating, powerful memoir.

    How to Build a Car explores the story of Adrian’s unrivalled 35-year career in Formula One through the prism of the cars he has designed, the drivers he has worked alongside and the races in which he’s been involved.

    A true engineering genius, even in adolescence Adrian’s thoughts naturally emerged in shape and form – he began sketching his own car designs at the age of 12 and took a welding course in his school summer holidays. From his early career in IndyCar racing and on to his unparalleled success in Formula One, we learn in comprehensive, engaging and highly entertaining detail how a car actually works. Adrian has designed for the likes of Mario Andretti, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Damon Hill, David Coulthard, Mika Hakkinen, Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel, always with a shark-like purity of purpose: to make the car go faster. And while his career has been marked by unbelievable triumphs, there have also been deep tragedies; most notably Ayrton Senna’s death during his time at Williams in 1994.

    Beautifully illustrated with never-before-seen drawings, How to Build a Car encapsulates, through Adrian’s remarkable life story, precisely what makes Formula One so thrilling – its potential for the total synchronicity of man and machine, the perfect combination of style, efficiency and speed.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateNov 30, 2017
    ISBN9780008196820

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    Reviews for How to Build a Car

    4.5/5

    121 ratings12 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Nice to hear the thinkings, problems and solutions from one of the greatest man in the F1. So much things lived and suffered. Great audiobook

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Well written (and narrated) book that captured the life of Adrian Newey. I really appreciate his take on practical engineering problems and his line of thinking that went into his solutions. All around, great book.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Great book! Technical and intriguing from start to finish! Couldn't stop listening to it!
    • 5/5
      Fantastic
      Absolutely incredible great narrative really really good thank you
    • 5/5
      Just brilliant, Absolute delight of a book, Perfectly narrated! Highly recommended
    • 5/5
      A no frills look into the often unseen world of F1 engineering. Adrian Newey describes his successes and failures, highlighting some of the greatest peaks of his career, without forgetting his darkest moments. Truly a must read for any sports racing fan!
    • 5/5
      Fascinating human/ mechanical in-site to F1 and the people behind the scenes
    • 5/5
      Adrian Newey shows through exposing his journey in life that success is a learning game. The more you learn the more one sets up to succeed. Performance is the function of that learning
    • 5/5
      Ghost writer Andrew Holmes does a spectacular job at capturing Adrian Newey's cheekiness in both life and on the drawing board.

      Honestly, I only wanted the nerdy behind the scenes technical details of Newey's career. That's here with extravagant detail and explanations that give context for the last three decades of F1 car design. Yet what surprised me was how engaging the personal details of Newey's story were. It's interesting that Newey never shies away from admitting workaholic commitment to his profession and yet from youth to present day, so much of this book conveys a witty and competitive spirit animating his entire life.

      A great book for F1 fans and especially for anyone interested in the evolution of design process and thinking in pursuit of lap time.
    • 5/5
      Authentic insight into people and politics involved in F1. Adrian tells us about himself, his work, the struggle to build a new, competitive F1 car year after year. He explains the rationale behind his designs and how some of his design came about. And the stories behind the stories you read about in F1. When the competitors insisted FIA stood for Ferrari International Aid. The song by John Lennon about F1 and its' characters (think Bernie E. for one). Read Adrian's opinion about some of the rule changes. It's great stuff.
    • 4/5
      Adrian Newey has been living and breathing cars since he first started sketching them at the age of 12. The roots of this love were seeing his father pottering around in the garage on some project or other. Drawing them was one thing, what he really wanted to do was build them, so a welding course followed one summer holiday. He tried racing karts, having saved to buy one, but even though he enjoyed it, it was not his thing. He worked hard to get into Southampton to do a degree in mechanical engineering, however, the maths was a struggle. Leaving with a 1st, he wrote to Brabham and a lot of the other teams but nothing seemed to be offered until a chance call from Fittipaldi and his interview consisted of a nervous wait while Harvey Postlethwaite took his Ducati for a test ride. He was in the door.

      The first car that he was involved with, Newey ended up redesigning the aerodynamics to meet the latest change in regulations. The team folded after the money ran out and he was offered a position at March working on the 83G as well as working on the car for the Daytona 24 hour race. Success in that meant he was seconded to Truesports to help with another Indycar. Then the opportunity beckoned for a place in a Formula 1 team, and he joined Leyton House where he had the chance to design a car from scratch. Other teams noticed his success and soon he was working for Williams on their FW14 to FW18 cars before being poached again by McLaren. Leaving there under a little bit of a cloud, he ended up with the newest team in the paddock, Red Bull. The owner wanted to make a serious investment in the sport to promote the brand and the drink and so began a new era and four world championships.

      People are well aware of the drivers who wrestle these cars at 200 mph around some of the fastest circuits in the calendar. There are a few team heads that people can name, but most of the designers, engineers and aerodynamicists are completely unknown. But there is one who is almost a household name, Adrian Newey. To put it frankly he is an engineering genius. He has worked with almost all the big teams, using his wide experience in creating a car that just goes very very fast. These cars have, in the right hands, give some of the best drivers in the world race wins and world championships. I have been an F1 fan since the age of 8. I grew up in Woking, and McLaren has always been my number one team, though their performance in the past few years has not done them any favours. There is plenty of fascinating detail in this book, as Newey writes about some of his personal life as well as lots of information about the cars that he designed and how he solved the particular problems that the constant changes in regulation through up. Definitely a books for the die hard F1 fan.
    • 3/5
      Snappily written and divided into car-based sections and then further into bite-sized chapters and by the ghost writer this is a very easy read. It's generally light tone varies appropriately at parts such as the death of Ayrton Senna or brief mentions of martial difficulties. The Formula One gossip is interesting without being too btichy. The engineering parts all seem to just boil down to aerodynamics and body shape.The layout and typography are really nicely done as well.