Newey sheds fresh light on his own negative childhood experiences

Adrian Newey has had a long career with lots of success. He has won 12 constructors' championships and 13 drivers' championships with his designs. Many people, therefore, consider him to be the best designer ever.

In an interview with Topgear, the Brit is open about his childhood. In it, he reveals that he was a maverick at school and that this shaped his life path. "I never particularly enjoyed school. I went to a convent school until the age of six, at which point I still couldn’t write because I was left-handed, and the nuns had made me sit on that hand. I wasn’t very good at making friends, and I had to take a bus 10 miles to school which meant that the friends I did have weren’t local."

Newey's loneliness caused him to start designing

"So I spent a lot of my holiday time alone making Tamiya scale models until I got bored making other people’s designs and started making my own, using bits of aluminium and fibreglass. My father was a veterinary surgeon but also a great car enthusiast. We had a lathe and basic metalworking machinery in the garage. I was actually picturing something in my mind’s eye, sketching it on a piece of paper, and turning it into an object."