Photo: Red Bull Content Pool
Aston Martin recently won a fierce battle to sign Adrian Newey, but early in his career the man every driver would surely want working on their car got dumped by one.
It was 1982 and the driver was Christian Danner, also at an early point in his career. He was a European Formula 2 sophomore with the works March team, but still adapting to single-seaters having bypassed lower categories.
“I’m the only person in the world of motor racing who has ever said I don’t want to work with Adrian Newey, which is kind of a rotten privilege. But both Adrian and I are still laughing about it,” Danner told Formula Scout.
After starting racing in Renault 5s, “a guy [Manfred Cassani] came to me and said: ‘I have a BMW M1 Procar and an F2 team, Christian, why don’t you come to me and I’ll make you a Formula 1 driver?’.
“I did five or six races with that M1, one practice in an F2 race on the Nurburgring and one hillclimb race in the F2 car,” before BMW offered him “a seat in the March-BMW works team” for 1981.
“Never having any problems with confidence, I knew that I had no idea about driving single-seaters, so they sent me to Goodwood for a test [and] I was quick.
“The trouble was my team-mates were first and the runner-up in the European Formula 3 championship, Corrado Fabi and Thierry Boutsen; they taught me the lesson that driving a single-seater is not all that easy. And it took me the 1981 season to get on top of it.”
Newey had joined the Fittipald F1 team from university, but after that folded took an offer from March to get a broad education with the period’s leading producer of customer single-seaters.
Part of his role was being Danner’s race engineer. They lasted just one race together, the 1982 season opener at Silverstone. Danner retired while leading after running out of fuel, and it later transpired he had a leaking tank.
Nevertheless, Danner thought Newey was not up to the job and wanted him replaced immediately, ultimately swapping him for March’s veteran designer Ralph Bellamy.
“I didn’t want to work with Newey and I told him: ‘Adrian, you’ve got no experience, I’ve got no experience, this is not going to match’. He was very unconcentrated. He [once] forgot to unplug the radio, and he didn’t know what he was doing on fuel consumption. He was just a young designer, you know?
“So, I ended up with Ralph running my car and Adrian ended up with [Johnny] Cecotto. It was Cecotto, myself and [Corrado] Fabi, who eventually won the championship.”
Danner came 14th that season, was fifth in the next two and champion when International Formula 3000 replaced European F2 in 1985. After an F1 career spent at backmarker teams, and 18 IndyCar races over six years, Danner enjoyed greater success in touring cars and is now known for his F1 punditry at German broadcaster RTL.