2024 WORLD CAR PERSON OF THE YEAR
ONE OF the most successful engineers in the history of Formula One has been named 2024 World Car Person of the Year.
Red Bull Racing’s Adrian Newey OBE won the award, which is voted on by more than 100 World Car Awards judges from 29 countries.
As Chief Technical Officer of Red Bull Racing, aerodynamicist Adrian Newey is the designer and driving force behind the RB19, the most dominant race car in the history of Formula One.
In 2023, the RB19 won a remarkable 21 of 22 races enabling Red Bull’s sixth and Max Verstappen’s third World Championships and establishing the design concept to be pursued by most of its competitors.
After 35 years in Formula 1 Newey has notched up more than 200 victories for cars of his design, Newey is at the absolute peak of his spectacular career.
Prior to the six driver championships and five constructor titles, thanks to his cars at Red Bull, Newey worked at Williams where his cars won four driver championships, 59 grands prix wins, took 78 pole positions and 60 fastest laps, from 114 races from 1991 till 1997.
Moving to McLaren his success continued, with two more world drivers championships for Mika Hakkinen, with the Fin just missing out on a third and a hat-trick.
The other four Person of The Year finalists in addition to Newey were:
Stephan Durach, Senior Vice President Connected Company Development, BMW Group.
Andreas Preuninger, Director GT model line, Porsche AG.
C.V. Raman, Chief Technology Officer, MarutiSuzuki.
Lisa Reeves, Head of Interior Design, Volvo Cars. The World Car Person of the Year award was created in 2018 to recognise an individual who has made a significant contribution to the global automotive industry, during the previous calendar year.
That contribution could include a significant impact to their brand or company, or a significant safety, engineering, design or technical advancement of benefit to the industry or to consumers.
Previous World Car Person of the Year recipients are:
2023 - SangYup Lee - Executive Vice President, Head of Hyundai and Genesis Global Design Centre, Hyundai Motor Company.
2022 - Luc Donckerwolke - Executive Vice President for Design and Chief Creative Officer, Hyundai Motor Group.
2021 - Akio Toyoda - President and CEO, Toyota Motor Corporation.
2020 - Carlos Tavares - CEO of PSA Group.
2019 - Sergio Marchionne - CEO, FCA; Chairman, CNH Industrial; and Chairman and CEO, Ferrari.
2018 - Hakan Samuelsson - President and CEO, Volvo Car Group (inaugural winner)