Newey: "F1 needs to be aspirational"

Apologies, I'm a bit late posting this. Adrian Newey attended the Classic 24 at Daytona with the '84 March he designed. Didn't race it though, destroyed the rear right suspension when a tire blew in practice. Shame.

In any case, he took time Friday evening to participate in a Q&A session. For a few of the questions, he laughed and said "there's no one from F1 here tonight, is there?" Some of his thoughts that I recall (paraphrased from memory):

(Asked where he sees F1 in 10 years). F1 needs to be aspirational. We watch sports to see people do things we know we could never do. If you make the cars so easy to drive that people think 'yeah, I could do that' you've lost it. No one will watch. (He answered a follow up question with "Liberty Media is an American company isn't it? Send them an email. Make some phone calls.")

(When asked whether Lewis would be champion if everyone had an equal car). Absolutely not. If you put Sebastian, Lewis and our two boys in the same car, I don't know who the champion would be, but I know Lewis wouldn't be winning all the races.

(And my favorite, when asked about the hybrid power units). Come on, let's face it. No kid ever put a poster of a Prius on his bedroom wall.

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The other guy up there with him is Ray Evernham, NASCAR engineer and crew chief for such guys as Jimmie Johnson. Very smart and funny guy in his own right. One story was about building and racing his own cars, but after sitting out due to injuries from a crash - he crashed a lot - he started building cars for other guys. Those guys won a lot. And he thought "Wow. If I can build cars that good, I must be a really ****ty driver." And he stayed behind the wall ever since. But he's another thread.