Red Bull chief says F1 is 'lucky' his team and Ferrari are so evenly matched in 2022

Formula 1’s management and fans are ‘lucky’ that Red Bull and Ferrari have both designed such evenly matched cars at the beginning of Formula 1’s new technical era, according to Red Bull’s chief technical officer Adrian Newey.

Though the Mercedes team has won the past eight eight successive constructors’ championships, it is Red Bull and Ferrari who are the frontrunners so far this season, having seemingly nailed the transition process during the biggest change of regulations F1 has seen in a generation.

Car designs have been revamped for 2022 in an effort to allow cars to follow one another more closely and in turn permit drivers to race each other harder, rendering overtaking more frequent.

The evidence provided by Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc’s sensational battles for the lead over multiple laps at the opening grand prixs in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia so far suggests that the changes are having the desired effect.

It is common for teams to build significantly different cars from one another at the beginning of a new regulation era, before one concept proves the most efficient and teams gradually homologate their machinery. The fact that the Red Bull RB18 and Ferrari F1-75 could look so different but be so evenly matches for pace is therefore a very fortuitous outcome, says Newey.

‘I think at the moment, the lucky thing for F1 is that we have got two teams, Ferrari and ourselves, who over the first couple of races have had very similar performance,’ Newey told the F1 Nation podcast. ‘That is what is giving the good racing, obviously.’

Newey is arguably the most highly-regarded designer in Formula 1, having devised some of the most impressive cars in the history of motorsport, including the Williams FW14, McLaren