F1 News: Newey still trails Costa as F1’s greatest ever designer

The two greatest car designers in F1 history, Aldo Costa and Adrian Newey, are now neck and neck in determining who is the greatest of all-time.

–by Mark Cipolloni–

Aldo Costa is now retired and working part-time for Dallara back in Italy on other projects, but he still holds a lead over Newey who is still cranking out winning cars, but no longer as the Technical Director, more in a consultant role.

The Facts

While they both have designed cars that took drivers to a F1 title, Costa still leads Newey by 1 if you count when they were the design lead. Costa still leads Newey by 4 Constructors Titles. Newey also won 2 drivers and constructors titles when Pierre Wache was the Technical Director and Newey was there to bounce ideas off of so we cannot give Newey full credit for those. Maybe we should count them as 50% for Newey and 50% for Wache.

While a lot has been said about Adrian Newey greatness because he is British and the F1 media is heavily pro-British, Aldo Costa is still the greatest F1 designer in history.

The facts don’t lie.

However, Newey can add to his totals and take the lead if he wins more Constructor’s Titles and Drivers Titles with him as the sole Technical Director.

Costa retired in 2019, but stayed on as a design consultant for Mercedes another year and designed the Dual Axis Steering (DAS) system that brought Hamilton yet another title in 2020.

Costa does not get credited with the car design for 2020 because he designed only the DAS portion of the car, but in fact it was his DAS concept and design on the 2020 car that gave Hamilton his 7th world title.

He designed 14 championship winning F1 cars, and should have an asterisk next to that number because he was a big part of the 2020 Championship winning car.

Shall we give him 14.5?

Aldo Costa F1 World Championships 

Adrian Newey F1 World Championships

Adrian Newey & Pierre Wache F1 World Championships

Mark C. reporting for AutoRacing1.com