Greatest Racecar? Adrian Newey’s Bluebird-Proteus CN7 Land Speed Record car

Like many designers I like to push the envelope, so, when answering the question about my consideration of my greatest racecar I’d like to do the same—I’d like to choose a land speed record car. In my view, probably the most technically advanced car for its time was the Bluebird-Proteus CN7. When looking at it, it shows an understanding of aerodynamics, or rather their understanding of aerodynamics, I should say. It was one of the first cars, if not the first car, to use ground effects properly. The aluminum honeycomb construction was so far in advance of anything else that had been done in motor racing at that time. When you think it was designed in 1956 and completed in 1960—it was just genius.

I’ve been asked many times which of the cars I’ve designed do I like the most. Truly, it’s a very difficult question to answer. I suppose, looking back, it has to be the 1988 Leyton House March F1 car. It was my first Formula One car, or rather the first Formula One car I was totally responsible for. I also believe it was the car that changed the direction of F1 racing. It was at the back end of the turbo era when Formula One cars started to look very clumsy. We only had a normally aspirated engine, so we had to make the car very aerodynamically efficient. We had to package the whole design of the car very tight and efficiently to get the maximum out of the chassis to make up for the loss of power with the normally aspirated engine.