F1: Mika Hakkinen lauds Adrian Newey over Verstappen title win

Mika Hakkinen has praised Adrian Newey for his role in Max Verstappen’s title-winning season this year.

Red Bull are once again top of the tree with them on course to win the Constructors’ championship to go alongside the Drivers’ title Max Verstappen won at the Japanese Grand Prix last time out.

Indeed, it’s been a phenomenal year for the Bulls and, naturally, praise has been afforded to Adrian Newey, who has once again led a team of designers to produce a truly brilliant car, with him getting a very good handle of the 2022 rules and regulations changes.

When someone like Newey is in your team you've always got a chance of winning titles, as he did with Williams and McLaren in the past, and it was with McLaren that Hakkinen got to work alongside Newey to pick up two Drivers' titles, as Max has now done with Red Bull.

The Finn, then, was full of kind words for Newey in his latest column for Unibet:

"I am very happy for Red Bull's technical boss Adrian Newey. It was thanks to his work at McLaren that I had great cars with which to win both my World Championship titles and he is still winning at Red Bull all these years later.

"He really is the most successful designer in F1 history, and although I know he has a great team of design engineers working with him, his technical leadership is just brilliant.

"Even during Mercedes' dominant years [between 2014 and 2021], Red Bull remained competitive and it's amazing to see Adrian's team take advantage of this year's new regulations to win another title. Congratulations to him."

F1 has some of the best engineering minds in the world and few are as bright as Newey, who has absolutely aced the new-era F1 car design with the RB18.

He'll be looking to keep that going into 2023,